Sabine Frühstück Colonizing Sex Sexology and Social Control in Modern Japan Colonialisms

Colonizing Sex
COLONIALISMS
Jennifer Robertson, General Editor
I. Doctors within Borders: Profession~ Ethnicity~ and Modernity in Colonial

Taiwan~ by Ming-cheng Lo
2. A Different Shade of Colonialism: Egypt~ Great Britain~ and the Mastery
of the Sudan~ by Eve M. Troutt Powell
3. Living with Colonialism: Nationalism and Culture in the Anglo-Egyptian
Sudan~ by Heather Sharkey
4. Colonizing Sex: Sexology and Social Control in Modern Japan~ by Sabine

Friihstiick
Colonizing Sex
Sexology and Social Control
in Modern Japan
Sabine Friihstiick
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley . Los Angeles . London
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
2003 by the Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Friihstiick, Sabine-.
Colonizing sex : sexology and social control in mod-
ern Japan I Sabine Friihstiick.
p. cm. - (Colonialisms ; 4)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-520-23547-9 (doth: alk. paper)-
ISBN 0-520-23548-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Sexology-Japan. 2. Sex role-Japan. 3. Sex
customs-Japan. 4. Sex in popular culture-Japan.
5. Body, Human-Social aspects-Japan. 6. Social
control-Japan. 7. Japan -Social life and customs.
8. Japan-Foreign relations~ 9. Japan-Politics and
government. I. Title. II. Series.
HQI8J3 F78 2003
306.7'0952-dc2I 2003002461
Manufactured in the United States of America
12 I I 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I
The paper used in this publication is both acid-free and

totally chlorine-free (TCF). It meets the minimum re-
quirements of ANSIINISO z39.48-1992 (R 1997)
(Permanence of Paper). @
Contents
List of Illustrations Vll
Acknowledgments IX
Introduction I
I. Erecting a Modern Health Regime I7
2. Debating Sex Education 55
3 Sexology for the Masses 83
4 Claiming the Fetus 116
5 Breeding the Japanese "Race" 15 2
Epilogue 18 5
Notes 199
Bibliography 2I7
Index 259
Illustrations
I. Idealized sketch of a conscript and his examiner in a health

examination office, 1899 29
2. Twenty-year-old Manshii men undergoing a health
examination before being drafted, 194 I 30
3 The physical examination of conscripts was explained to
readers of illustrated children's books, 1940 31
4 Popular Medicine chose venereal diseases as a cover theme for
its November 1926 issue 45
5 One of many children's books that emphasized the importance
of proper hygiene, 1940 53
6. The first issue of the journal I-lumankind: Der Mensch, 1905 57
7 The spring 1920 issue of Akiyama Yoshio's journal Sexuality
dealt almost exclusively with "female sexual desire" 101
8. Sexual Theory (April 1928) distinguished itself from
the beginning with its entertaining spoofs of other
sexological magazines 108
9 Advertisements for birth control devices in a popular
magazine, 193 5 117
10. Advertisement boards at the entrance of a Tokyo
pharmacy, 1937 14 6
II. Advertisement featuring a man on Tokkapin tablets from the
January 1927 issue of Popular Medicine 17 1
Vll
Vill Illustrations
12. Advertisement for Androstin (Andorosuchin), a

potency-enhancing drug, I 9 37 173
13 Advertisement for Chireorupin from the December 1933
issue of Popular Medicine 174
I4. Advertisement for Bunpireshon from the April 1937 issue
of Popular Medicine 175
15. April 1949 issue of Marital Sex Life 182
Acknowledgments
I began research for this project with my dissertation (completed in

1996), under the guidance of Sepp Linhart and Helga Nowotny, then
both at the University of Vienna. Sepp taught me to be an intrepid ad-
venturer and to examine the road maps, that is, all sources, as carefully
as possible before embarking on my scholarly journey. Helga helped me
muster the courage it takes to think things through and the boldness it
takes to write them down. I will always be grateful to them both.
I run every new idea and any little discovery by Thomas Ludwig first.
I thank him for his continued enthusiasm and critical support, without
which this book would not have been nearly as pleasurable and gratify-
ing to research and write. I also owe heartfelt thanks to Jennifer Robert-
son, who has read numerous drafts of this book. Her interest in my work
has encouraged me tremendously over the years. I regard it a great
honor to have my book included in her Colonialisms series.
I also feel indebted to colleagues and friends, several of whom have
read drafts of the entire manuscript or individual chapters, for their cri-
tiques, expertise, and the opportunities to exchange ideas: my thanks to
Akagawa Manabu, Jim Bartholomew, Kasia Cwiertka, Elise Edwards,
Tak Fujitani, Furukawa Makoto, Shel Garon, Allan Grapard, Ann Her-
ring, Inoue Shoichi, Bill Johnston, Kawai Yii, Kawamura Kunimitsu, Tom
Laqueur, Stewart Lone, Morris Low, Regine Mathias-Pauer, Matsu-
bara Yoko, Muta Kazue, Nagai Yoshikazu, Nakajima Hideto, Sumiko
IX
x Acknowledgments
Otsubo, Greg Pflugfelder, Don Roden, Saito Hikaru, Miriam Silverberg,

Brigitte Steger, Takahashi Ichiro, and Ueno Chizuko. Laurie Monahan
has helped me see images, including those in this book, in new ways.
The development of this book was greatly facilitated by the hospital-
ity of Tominaga Shigeki and Yokoyama Toshio at the Institute of Re-
search in Humanities, Kyoto University (1992-1994), Hirowatari Seigo
at the Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo (1998-1999 and
2001), Andrew Barshay at the Center for Japanese Studies, University of
California at Berkeley (2001-2002), and Jean Oi at the Center for East
Asian Studies, Stanford University (2001-2002). I thank them for pro-
viding me with the opportunity to pursue the research and writing for
this book in their midst. I am also indebted to my colleagues at the De-
partment for East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies at the Univer-
sity of California at Santa Barbara; they have been supportive in many
ways, including graciously allowing me time to complete this book.
I also am grateful to Lisa Rosenblatt and Patricia Marby Harrison,
who edited and polished the text before it met any reviewer's critical
eye. Three anonymous readers for the University of California Press
have made invaluable suggestions. At the press, lowe special thanks
to my editor Sheila Levine for her encouragement and patience and to
Jan Spauschus for meticulous copy editing. I am also grateful to Mary
Severance, who has expertly ushered the book through the publication
process.
My research and writing in Austria, Japan, and the United States were
generously supported by the following institutions, fellowships, and
grants: the Japanese Ministry of Education Postgraduate Fellowship
(1992-1994); the Tamaki Foundation research grant (1995); the Japan
Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship (1998 - 1999); a postdoctoral grant
from the Faculty of the Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Vi-
enna (1999); and the University of California President's Fellowship in
the Humanities (2001-2002).
Introduction
Modernity is an endeavour: the discovery and appropriation
of desire.
Henri Lefebvre, Introduction to Modernity
Sexuality is not the most intractable element in power rela-

tions, but rather one of those endowed with the greatest
instrumentality: useful for the greatest number of maneuvers
and capable of serving as a point of support, as a linchpin,
for the most varied strategies.
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality
This book is a history of sexual knowledge in modern Japan and the uses
made of that knowledge. It examines radical changes in the perception
and description as well as the colonization of sex and sexuality. It fol-
lows the close and complicated exchanges about sexual behavior among
governmental agencies, scholars and other intellectuals, social reform-
ers, the media, and the wider public in order to reconstruct the processes
of normalization, medicalization, and pedagogization. In addition, the
book traces the countless modifications in the modes by which sexual
knowledge was circulated, valorized, attributed, and appropriated. The
underlying structure of this book is informed by various sites and the
connections among them-sites where normative ideas about sex were
created, examined, weighed, transformed, and translated into cultural
practices in an effort to "colonize" the sex and sexuality of the Japanese
populace.
As with other instances of colonization (Osterhammel I999 [I995]:
4 I), the colonization I describe here was not carried out via swift attacks
on unsuspecting victims but came about gradually. It began with what
a geographer or military man would call the reconnaissance of the un-
I
2 Introduction
known terrain, including the discovery by military surgeons of a high rate

of venereal disease among members of the imperial army in the I880s
and the recognition by pediatricians of infantile sexual desire around
1900. Through several phases, the colonization of sex shifted toward the
development of what a colonialist would consider a complete colonial
ruling apparatus. For example, sex for soldiers was eventually provided
within and restricted to "comfort stations~' under military control; par-
ents, school and factory physicians, teachers, and, later, officials in the
Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare
became entrusted with the informed guidance of children's sexuality;
and ordinary women and men were expected to consult eugenic mar-
riage offices in order to ensure that their sexual union would result in de-
sirable offspring or birth control advice offices to prevent the birth of un-
desired children.
Perhaps the colonization of sex has never reached a state of complete-
ness. At certain moments in the modern history of Japan, however, it
seems as if the boundaries and the control of the new terrain of knowl-
edge about sex and sexuality were firmly set, while places within this ter-
rain were (re)named, once and for all.
My analysis centers on the strategies employed in the colonization of
sex in Japan. I am interested in the techniques at work in the conflicts
and negotiations that aimed at the creation of a normative Japanese sex-
uality. This sexuality was viewed as existing primarily between women
and men, and it was documented in military data that reflected soldiers'
health, in moral police registers that tracked prostitutes and their dis-
eases, in sex education for youth, and in pronatalist and expansionist
propaganda that sought to reduce frigidity in women and impotence in
men. This normative sexuality was declared vital to the health, improve-
ment, and future of the Japanese empire.
The colonization of sex in Japan involved complicated power rela-
tions marked by two distinct technologies, those of bodily discipline and
mass regulation. Power, as Michel Foucault noted, works on the entire
surface of the social field via a system of relays, connections, and trans-
missions; it is never monolithic. Every moment of negotiation over the
understanding of sexuality in modern Japan reveals power functioning
in myriad small ways-in the various conflicts between scientific and
popular knowledge, the political uses of science, and the interactions
between Japan's and other national cultures' knowledge in the field of
sexology.
Power relations formed the various threads-some tightly knotted,
Introduction 3
some loosely woven-that carne to constitute a complex texture of de-

bates on numerous issues: the necessity of sex education in the broadest
sense, to improve the physical and mental health of the populace on the
one hand and to "liberate sex" on the other hand; the prevention of
venereal diseases; the problem of masturbation (which was often col-
lapsed into the new category of homosexuality) and its alleged conse-
quences (including mental illnesses, venereal diseases, and tuberculosis);
the legalization of birth control and other objectives of Japan's nascent
women's movement; the fight against prostitution (which was most of-
ten a fight against prostitutes, rarely against pimps, and hardly ever
against clients); the emergence of "positive" and "negative" eugenics;
and eventually, the implementation of "racial hygiene" policies at the
expense of sex research and education.
These debates were carried out in a heterogeneous, changing forum.
I analyze shifts in the cultural meanings of sex and sexuality between
various debates about sex and identify the main actors-scientific ex-
perts, administrators and politicians, media, and the wider public as rep-
resented by various social reform groups-involved in the construction
and normalization of Japanese sexuality. Government agencies, schol-
ars, and social reformers differed in their aims as well as their methods,
but they were connected by a common desire to understand, document,
and guide the sexual practices and attitudes of the Japanese populace.
Even specialists' efforts to encourage members of the public to reveal de-
tails about their sex lives in order to gain data, legitimacy, and status for
their goal of launching a "radical sex education" program (kyushinteki
seikyoiku) were grounded in arguments about "scientific expertise."
Their expert status was contested, however, and was constantly being
renegotiated.
Closely connected to the colonialist strategies I examine are the prac-
tices of medicalization and pedagogization that depicted the individual
body as a miniature of the social, the national, and the imperial body.
Throughout the late nineteenth century, the primary emphasis of these
efforts was on the male body, thus designing the national body as deci-
sively, if implicitly, male. The normalization of sex drew into its web
all-male conscripts and soldiers who came to be considered constituent
of the national condition, the consolidation of the nation, modernity,
and progress-in short, who came to embody the Japanese nation to be
achieved.
From the I9IOS onward, these efforts seem to have been comple-
mented or even superseded by a significantly increased medical and ped-
4 Introduction
agogical interest in the female body. Curiously, when politico-economic

activities decisively shifted toward imperialist actions in East and South-
east Asia, the expansive qualities of the (fertile) female physique ap-
peared in the foreground of the discourse of sex, revealing a preoccupa-
tion with the womb, the uterus, fertility, and race. This singling out of
the uterus as the most important organ of the female body and of the
race may have had to do with obstetricians' anxiety about their status
within the medical profession (Gallagher and Laqueur I987:X-xi), but
it also fed into efforts to elevate the value of women's reproductive or-
gans for empire building.
Accordingly, the colonization of sex occasionally foreshadowed, or
coincided and overlapped with, the Japanese imperialist penetration of
East and Southeast Asia. In contrast to these external activities, efforts
at national unity and imperial prosperity in the realm of sex and sexu-
ality primarily produced processes and practices of "internal coloniza-
tion," or battles against enemies within Japan. These battles were driven
by a historically specific, multifold rhetoric that consisted of cries for
defense and security and for liberation and truth, thus emphasizing in
every historical moment how the sexual body has been (and is) part of
a much broader current in po-litical and cultural life.
The first pair of powerful rhetorical figures, defense and security, re-
ferred not only to military operations or planning but also to a general
state of mind. Defense, once classified by Henri Lefebvre (I995 [1962]:
I 90) as the key element of the modern notion of well-being, represented
a political and intellectual commitment to the protection of Japan against
Western colonial po\vers, disease, and moral degeneration. By the
I890S, military surgeons and administrators had begun to plead for the
defense of soldiers' health against prostitutes' venereal diseases. Around
1900, pedagogues set out to secure children from their own (subcon-
scious) desires and the (sexual) dangers of a modern society. During the
I920S and 1930S, some sexologists took it upon themselves to defend
what they perceived as sexual normalcy against perversion. And during
the occupation era, officials called for the protection of impoverished
girls from (sexual) seduction by the occupation forces-even while ag-
gressively recruiting women to serve the nation as prostitutes (Kanzaki
I954a, 1954b, 1955). The rhetoric of defense and security was applied
to and connected with perceptions of the national body, public health,
and sexuality. It also tied in with the language of liberation and that of
its counterpart, oppression.
While Foucault (1990 [1978]) and subsequent historians of sex and
Introduction 5
sexuality have questioned the assumption that repression was an evil re-
ality and that a historical transition could be traced leading to eman-
cipation, my study highlights the frequent recurrence-each time in a
slightly different guise and at the hands of different actors-of the re-
pression and liberation of sex throughout Japan's modern history. At the
beginning of the twentieth century, medical doctors, pedagogues, and
sex educators invoked the (necessity of) the liberation of sex in order to
shed oppressive traditional beliefs and to unburden sex of mystification.
Immediately after the end of World War II, officials in the ministries of
education and health and welfare again declared sex and sexuality in
need of liberation, this time from the militarist and fascist regulations
of the wartime regime. For its proponents during the 1920S and 19305,
the liberation of sex implied the liberation of women from involuntary
motherhood and from social inequity in general. In the minds of reform-
ers of that era, a liberated sexuality would catapult the working class out
of poverty. Very few of thenl imagined sexual liberation as a component
or consequence of revolution; most insisted that its central tool was sex-
ual knowledge based on scientific facts, or simply the truth about sex.
While most historiographical accounts of sexuality in Japan focus on
analyzing notions of gender and the erotic (Silverberg 1998), gender am-
bivalence and ambiguity (Roden 1990; Robertson 19 89, 199 2, 1998,
1999), homosexuality (Pflugfelder 1999; Robertson 1999), and other
aspects of the eroticization of gender and sexuality (Muta 1992; Ueno
1990), I explore the obsession with the "truth about sex" and the use of
the phrase as a discursive tool.
As much as negotiations over a modern understanding of sexuality in
Japan intersected with concepts of nation and empire building and over-
lapped with debates about the nature of Japanese culture and the proj-
ect of modernity, they also functioned to increase the premium placed
on scientific-mindedness. On the one hand, scientific knowledge gained
ground compared to other forms of knowledge claims. With respect to
sexual practices, Yamamoto Senji, for example, forcefully proclaimed
"seeking the truth" (shinfitsu no tsuikyft) as his goal (see Odagiri
1979a). On the other hand, knowledge about sex in modern Japan was
perceived as dangerous to produce, possess, and spread. This book traces
the specific activities and practices that complicated and diversified the
discourse of sex by addressing questions of who was talking about sex,
what they felt was at stake, and which state and private-sector institu-
tions collected, documented, and disseminated material about sex and
sexology.
6 Introduction
One central idea was shared not only by the sexologists but by all par-
ticipants in the modern and scientific-minded discourse of sex-an idea
that would continue to inform ongoing arguments for and against sex
education. Proponents and opponents of sex education were convinced
that accurate knowledge would lead to "correct" behavior, and that the
correctness of the latter could be measured by its social consequences.
Advocates of divergent aims-such as individualization of birth control
choices, improvement in the living standards of and liberation of un-
derprivileged groups, and state enforcement of "racial hygiene)' pro-
grams--could all successfully invoke science and the value of scientific-
mindedness. Thus they contributed in very different ways to drawing
more and more issues formerly not thought of as sexual under the um-
brella of the science of sex.
The formation of the Japanese nation-state in the I870S brought
about new concepts of the populace as a social organism to be pro-
tected, nurtured, and improved by a public health system borrowed pri-
marily from Prussia and other European countries. By the I 880s, the
state had developed powerful instruments with which to investigate,
manage, and control the health (more precisely, the sexual health) of the
populace in order to build a modern health regime-the subject of chap-
ter I. Statistics and other forms of mapping the Japanese population
seemed to playa modest supporting role for administrative mechanisms
and military purposes. However, in Japan as in other countries, they
also created new categories of people.
The new technologies of categorization and representation in so-
cial scientific terms created a national body that had not existed before.
As Ian Hacking has suggested, its components were not "real') entities
that awaited scientific discovery. However, once certain distinctions had
been made, new realities effectively came into being. Far from creating
a prioritized interest in a binary, dichotomous distinction between het-
erosexual and homosexual, the processes of "making up people" (Hack-
ing I999 [I986]:I6I-I63) produced a great variety of sexual types-
the syphilitic soldier, the masturbating child, the homosexual youth, the
infertile (or frigid) woman, the neurasthenic white-collar worker, and
the sexually and militarily impotent warrior.
Between the late I870S and the early I94os, debates on what had
come to be known in Japan as the "sexual question" were as multifac-
eted as their participants were diverse. During that seventy-year period,
a new system was established that enabled officials to undertake a de-
tailed observation of the Japanese people in the name of public health.
Introduction 7
The year 1872 marked one beginning of this new health regime, which
was based on a new medical system and a strong emphasis on public hy-
giene and preventive medicine. Ann Bowman Jannetta (1987,1997) has
shown the enormous importance of this medical system in the preven-
tion of epidemics in early modern Japan. I am interested in how the med-
ical system contributed to the concern of the state and its agencies about
matters of sexual practice.
The year 1872 also marked the introduction of compulsory ele-
mentary education for both sexes and compulsory military service for
twenty-year-old men in Japan. Initially, soldiers and prostitutes were the
main targets of investigation by the police and military authorities. They
also were examined and observed by physicians and surveyed and doc-
umented by government public health agencies. Although only a small
portion of the twenty-year-old male population was drafted for military
service during peacetime, virtually all men of that age underwent a thor-
ough medical examination and were categorized according to a four-tier
system of physical fitness. Prostitutes were considered a necessary evil,
mere instruments for keeping soldiers' and other men's sexual needs in
check. They were regarded as primary carriers of venereal disease far
into the twentieth century and were put under increasingly restrictive
regulations in the name of the health and welfare of the population in
general and soldiers and mothers and children in particular, all of whom
were presumed "innocent."
In addition to conscripts and prostitutes, children were identified
from the turn of the twentieth century onward as crucial to the health
and future of the Japanese body politic. Their anatonlical features were
measured, their mental and physical conditions diagnosed, and their de-
velopment closely monitored. Kathleen Uno (1991, 1999) has charted
how social reformers at the beginning of the twentieth century widely
pronl0ted concepts of institutional child welfare. My approach allows
me to examine how the newly developed academic fields of pediat-
rics and pedagogy identified children as sexual beings whose sexual de-
sire (seiyoku) was recognized and repeatedly confirmed through hith-
erto unprecedented and regular examinations by a network of school
physicians.
It was the new theories of child development that prompted discus-
sions about the necessity of instructing children and youth on their sex-
uality and the obligation to help parents, teachers, and other social ac-
tors guide children's sexual development and maturation. In adults, an
excessive sex life was perceived as a precursor to mental illness, tuber-
8 Introduction
culosis, and venereal disease. In children, nervous exhaustion (shinkei

karo) and masturbation were attributed to misdirected sexual desire.
Hence, the sex education of children moved to center stage in the dis-
course on the improvement of the national body, a discourse that con-
tinued through the twentieth century.
In chapter 2, I analyze in depth the first debate on sex education
printed in September and October 1908 in Japan's third-largest nation-
ally distributed newspaper, the Yomiuri Shinbun. In this published de-
bate, pedagogues and medical doctors presented their views on whether
and how children should be educated about sexual desire. The confes-
sions of children, ideas on masturbation and venereal disease, debates
about normalcy and deviance, the responsibility of teachers and parents,
the authority of experts, and the international character of sexual knowl-
edge generated a discursive configuration that characterized the coloni-
zation of sex in children. Infantile sexuality was put under surveillance,
became a "center of knowledge" (Stoler 1999 [1995]:142), was labeled
both endangered and dangerous, and was exploited as a locus of defense:
to defend the child came to mean to defend the nation. Infantile sexual-
ity was of crucial importance because the child's body impersonated the
empire's future.
Notions that connected the infantile body with the Japanese na-
tional/imperial body informed discussions and texts about sex through-
out the first half of the twentieth century. By the second decade of the
twentieth century, sexual issues previously discussed only within the
boundaries of specialized journals of medicine, pediatrics, and psychia-
try were capable of reaching the entire reading public of Japan, due to
the introduction of universal education and the expansion of the print
media market. The publication in 1908 of a series on the "sexual ques-
tion" in the Yomiuri Shinbun was intended to provoke a sense of urgency
among parents, teachers, scientists, and bureaucrats. It also effectively
anchored the sexual issue in the public consciousness, as sex education
became a perennial theme in general-interest papers and magazines,
popular medical journals, and women's magazines.
The series of articles on sex education both broadened and deepened
during the 1920S and 1930S. Self-appointed experts from the academic
fields of zoology, biology, and medicine, as well as from education and
the arts, attempted to create a new science of sex (seikagaku or seigaku).
These sexologists (seigakusha or seikagakusha) are the protagonists of
chapter 3. They were a mixed bunch of men and a few women at the
margins of academia who set out to push for the creation and popular-
Introduction 9
ization of sexual knowledge, the education of "the masses" about "cor-

rect" and "normal" sexual behavior, and the establishment of sexology
as a field of knowledge.
Since James Bartholome\v's (1989) path-breaking investigation into
the formation of science, a number of scholars have studied the devel-
opment of scholarly disciplines and scientific ideas in modern Japan,
tracing histories of the social sciences (Kawai T. 1989, 199 1, 1994), eth-
nography (Silverberg 1992), history (S. Tanaka 1993; Conrad 1999),
and eugenics and racial hygiene (Doak 1997; Otsubo and Bartholome,,'
199 8; Morris-Suzuki 1998; Otsubo 1999; Robertson 2001). Compared
to many of the leading characters in these stories, sexologists were mar-
ginal to the academic world. But at the beginning of the twentieth cen-
tury, sexologists shared-along with representatives of the younger gen-
eration of ethnographers, historians, and social scientists-the \vill to
establish a new field of knowledge and change society in general. Sexol-
ogists were less interested in the formulation of a theory of sex or the de-
sign of a sexual paradigm than in a comprehensive sexual reform cen-
tered on what some of them tried to establish as purely scientific sexual
knowledge. In order to mobilize allies from diverse groups in pursuit
of this goal, they created a new discursive space in which to generate
public controversy about sexual questions. The success of their efforts
hinged on connecting various scientific groups and their allies with the
"vider educated public and with more specific audiences. Moreover, they
had to \vin over powerful elites and institutions and to lobby continu-
ally to ensure their own legitimacy as experts and control over the pro-
duction of sexual knowledge.
This heterogeneous group did not produce the "truth about sex" in
a singular, esoteric way but rather pursued goals that were articulated
differently by each player at different historical moments. Statisticians
of the Japanese Bureau of Hygiene who documented venereal disease
among prostitutes in the 1890S clearly had different goals in mind than
did the editors of sexological journals who in the 1920S published
graphic images to illustrate a set of detailed instructions on the insertion
and function of intrauterine devices, or the censors from special units of
the Special Higher Police (Tokubetsu K6t6 Keisatsu) who confiscated
sexological journals but let advertisements for potency-enhancing prod-
ucts slip through their otherwise tight-knit network of social control.
The statistics produced by Japanese government agencies after the
I 870s are different in nature from the results of surveys conducted in the
1920S by sexologists: the former were large, homogenous samples fo-

10 Introduction
cusing on disease, while the latter were small, heterogeneous samples fo-
cusing on a broad range of questions on sexual behavior and designed
to explore the whole range of sexual practice and-in some cases-
to eventually draw a line between "normal" and "abnormal" sexual be-
havior. Similarly, knowledge about sex was transformed considerably
through the disputes on sexual questions that were engaged in by a va-
riety of actors throughout the late nineteenth and the first half of the
twentieth century. What began as a controversy over sex education re . .
suIted in highly diversified debates on masturbation, venereal disease,
birth control, and prostitution.
Central to the discussion in chapter 3 are sexologists' attempts to
professionalize sexology through such measures as conducting an em-
pirical survey of sexual practices (roughly two decades before Alfred C.
Kinsey's famous first report), founding sexological journals, and build-
ing alliances with other social reformers. Editors and contributing
authors repeatedly emphasized the importance of a "truly scientific"
knowledge of sex based on findings from the Japanese population rather
than results of sex research conducted in Germany, Austria, England,
France, or the United States. At the same time, they insisted that direct
interaction and exchange with the general populace would ensure that
sexual knowledge was adapted and disseminated to those who needed
it most.
The publication goals of each journal were spelled out in prefatory
editorials . For example, the editor's note in the journal Sexuality (Sei)
promised to guide young people's sexual development so as to ensure
that adultery, wild marriages, and abortions would disappear from so-
ciety. Certain that critics would question the seriousness of the journal,
the publishers of Sexuality addressed mothers specifically, declaring that
they should at least have a look at the journal before dismissing it, es-
pecially as it had been approved as a professional journal by the au-
thorities~ "Sexuality," the editor concluded, "represents the view that it
is necessary to know about humans and to research them" (Sei Novem-
ber I927: editorial).
Sexologists positioned themselves according to the needs and charac-
teristics of their immediate audience, which was far from diffuse, undif-
ferentiated, or passive. The audiences they reached were the educated
public, various professionals, secondary school and university students,
and business groups. These audiences were of course historically
specific. In the I8808, a typical seventeen-year-old girl from Tokyo most
likely had no formal secondary education. By 1925, however, she had a
Introduction II
good chance of attending one of 618 girls' high schools and of read-
ing one of the books or journals on sexual questions that flourished at
that time.
Anticipating their audience's social makeup, sexologists posed as
experts on sexual questions when criticizing sociopolitical policies for
the prevention of venereal disease and as confidantes when asked by
members of the literate public for advice on sexual problems. They pre-
sented themselves as defenders of scientific freedom when criticizing
censorship of their publications and as progressive reformers when they
railed against the unscientific, superstitious nature of traditional prac-
tices and those promoted by the new religions (i.e., Omotokyo, Ten-
rikyo, and Hitonomichi Kyodan). Japanese tradition was denounced as
uncivilized, and the authority of Western culture in general and of West-
ern science in particular was emphasized to establish and ensure expert
status for these first self-trained Japanese sexologists.
Sexologists pursued the appropriation and popularization of their
special science with just as much enthusiasm as they engaged in actual
empirical research. Chapter 4 sheds light on the problems involved in the
popularization of sexological ideas within the politically, scientifically,
and socially controversial conditions of the production, collection, and
dissemination of sexual knowledge during the early twentieth century.
The boundaries between "pure" scientific knowledge and "unscientific"
popular knowledge were purposefully blurred; the popularization of
sexual knowledge thus was not a straightforward, top-down process that
disseminated preestablished scientific ideas to a less educated, anony-
mous public. Rather, in the case of sexology, it consisted of a set of strat-
egies designed and deployed to further the development of a "science of
sex" outside the universities.
These strategies included public lectures followed by question-and-
answer sessions with local audiences, radio interviews with sexologists,
publication of articles in a wide array of media targeting different levels
of literacy and education, and extensive use of advice columns for sex-
ual problems. The popularization of their ideas was crucial for sex re-
formers and researchers, who perceived the population as a whole to
be their laboratory. Their science was not to be developed within the
boundaries of academic institutions. It would flourish only if it grew
out of interactions with a wider public and only if it were based on al-
liances with other social reformers who would make the search for the
"truth about sex," along with the legalization of birth control and the
liberation of prostitutes and of the working class more generally, one of
12 Introduction
their aims. Certainly these alliances brought about the mechanisms of

social management Sheldon Garon (1997) has discussed with respect to
religious groups, the women's movement, and the anti-prostitution
movement.
Simultaneously, Japanese government officials continued to gather
statistical data on physical and mental health as well as on venereal dis-
eases; scientists adopted the vocabulary and content of Western science
and tested them in Japanese contexts; and social movements made the
reform of sexual habits and behavior their main agenda. Each of these
three actors-government officials, scientists, and social reformers-as-
sumed several roles. Government officials supported and relied on the
work of some scientific and medical experts even as they hindered or
rejected the research of others. Scientists doubled as social activists,
founders of political parties, and party functionaries. Doctors treated
neurasthenia and venereal diseases and also wrote novels and journalis-
tic accounts about sex. Politicians founded movements to abolish pros-
titution. Women's rights activists translated works by Western sex re-
searchers and circulated petitions to repeal abortion laws, among other
legislation.
Invoking the rhetoric of scientific authority, sexologists insisted that
sexology was a science and defended it agains-t criticism from the more
established academic disciplines. Treading a fine line between collusion
with and distance from government institutions, Japanese sexologists
countered repressive state measures with arguments based on public
health and population policy. They found allies among members of
women's rights groups who were working to introduce new ideas about
and techniques of birth control. Their attempts to propagate sex educa-
tion were supported by representatives of the anti-prostitution move-
ment. Meanwhile, the reading public was won over both by informative
articles about sex and by erotic-pornographic stories published in sexo-
logical journals as well as in general-interest magazines and newspapers.
The late 1930S and early 1940S were marked by an increasing mili-
tarism that left little space for individual decisions in terms of sexuality
and other realms of life, and which was accompanied by a pronatalist
ideology best illustrated by the slogan "procreate and multiply." A new
discourse of eugenics and racial hygiene-borrowed mainly from na-
tional-socialist Germany-brought about laws that enabled physicians
to legally perform abortions and sterilizations of people with venereal
disease, alcoholism, epilepsy, and other diseases that were defined as
"hereditary." The sex reformers' program of creation and dissemination
Introduction 13
of accurate knowledge about sex-which was directed toward the de-

crease of poverty, the promotion of lasting worldwide peace, the im-
provement of maternal health, the elimination of illegal abortions, and
the improvement of the Japanese race-was hampered by the state's
program of population growth, the object of analysis in chapter 5.
Albeit never completely out of sight, interest in the history of eugen-
ics has been refueled by recent debates about euthanasia, scandals about
forced sterilization of the mentally ill in some Western countries until
very recently, and concerns about the reintroduction of the national-
socialist concept of the "unfit." Matsubara Yoko's intriguing study and
Sumiko Otsubo's ongoing work on the subject in Japan highlight crucial
actors at the center of the crossroads of academe and the state between
the late nineteenth century and the 19 50S (Matsubara 1997, 1998, 2000;
Otsubo and Bartholomew 199 8; Otsubo 1999).
In this book, I explore what the rise of eugenics and racial hygienic
thought did to the sexological project when, from the 1920S onward,
sexologists were lumped together with pacifists, socialists, communists,
and anarchists and regarded as a nuisance or even a danger to the imper-
ialist state. While some of the more outspoken sexologists were silenced
through house arrest, imprisonment, or, in at least one case, murder,
others were won over by an ideology that was directed at the multipli-
cation of healthy citizens through all possible means. Yamamoto Senji
was fatally stabbed in 1929 when he spoke out against Japan's aggres-
sive policy toward China. Abe Isoo, on the other hand, the founder of
Japan's first socialist party and a leading crusader for what he called the
"liberation of prostitutes," ,vas celebrated for his prolTIotion, in the late
193 os, of early marriages as an expedient means of increasing the pop-
ulation. Kato Shizue, eulogized today as the "grande dame of birth con-
trol" in Japan, did not speak publicly on birth control from 1937 to the
end of World War II and, during the 1950S and 1960s, opposed the le-
galization of the contraceptive pill.
Debates about sex overlapped at times vvith eugenics, the science of
"improving" the human race by controlling heredity. For example, in a
reflection of an argument that was eugenic at its core, all participants be-
lieved that the spread of knowledge about sex would improve individual
and social life and secure the future of the Japanese populace. However,
sexology was a potentially explosive subject for two reasons, one con-
cerning the nature of sexual knowledge itself, the other concerning the
various publics that were supposedly in need of sex education. Like other
intellectuals who advocated empirical research on Japan's social prob-
Introduction
lems, sex researchers worked toward social reform and thus were often
suspected-in some cases, rightly so-of sympathizing with socialist
and revolutionary causes. In their eyes, the dissemination of sexual
knowledge would help liberate the working class from its misery and
women from their roles as "childbearing machines." Anticipating this
view, some government officials translated the sex reformers' vision of a
better society into a scenario of social unrest and disorder. They feared
not only that women would turn the gendered order of society (as re-
flected in Japan's Civil Code of 1889) upside down if given the means to
control family size, but also that the middle and upper classes, which
were considered intellectually and morally superior, would contribute
less to population growth than would the lower classes.
Beginning in the mid-1920'S, the government implemented increas-
ingly restrictive censorship regulations in order to shield the public from
reformers' dangerous thoughts. In 1925, universal male suffrage was in-
troduced but was simultaneously tempered by the Peace Preservation
Law, which was based on a very broad definition of what constituted a
violation of peace and social order. The law was aimed at the more ex-
treme left-wing movements, but the vagueness of its wording and the
possibility of loose interpretation meant that thousands of people, in-
cluding many liberals and some sexologists, were arrested in its name. 1
Thus, the sexologists' task was not an easy one. Negotiations about
what kinds of sexual knowledge should be created and with whom this
knowledge should be shared were undertaken on three main fronts.
Representatives of established academic disciplines denounced the sex-
ologists' knowledge as "obscene." Social reformist groups such as parts
of the women's movement shared some of the goals of sex education
but disagreed with others. And the influence of the state was felt most
painfully in the form of censorship of sexological publications and the
imprisonment and house arrest of sexologists. Yamamoto Senji's career
is a good case in point, as it exemplifies the sexologists' antagonistic re-
lationship to the various agencies -of the state. Originally trained as a zo-
ologist at the Imperial University of Tokyo, Yamamoto began to lecture
publicly on human sexual development and practice. In 1922, he went
on a lecture tour from Osaka to Kobe, Nagoya, and other small cities
throughout Japan. In Tottori, police observers interrupted his talk sev-
eral times before they pulled him off the stage. The police report noted
that Yamamoto had used technical terms but nevertheless had encour-
aged masturbation, approved of abortion, and talked about "other ob-
Introduction IS
scenities" (see chapter 3). As a consequence of the scandal he was fired

from his positions at both Doshisha and Kyoto universities.
Publications that dealt with sexual desire, theories of pregnancy,
neo-Malthusian assertions, women's liberation, and critiques of the
marital institution were viewed as a threat to social order and the edu-
cated middle and upper classes' willingness to reproduce and thus were
subject to censorship.2 Until censorship policies brought (explicitly) sex-
ological publications to a halt in the late I9 3 as, the readers of that lit-
erature also played a role in decisions that involved the execution of cen-
sorship regulations. Journals directed at an academic readership faced
less restraint than did those with a broader audience. During the late
1920S and early 1930S, sexological journals, termed seiyoku zasshi (lit-
erally, journals of sexual desire) by the authorities, were the journals
most often censored or confiscated.
Despite the significant ruptures of decolonization and democratiza-
tion after I 945, previous configurations of sexuality persisted and sev-
eral alliances of important colonialist players remained intact. Many of
the actors who had dealt with sexual issues before World War II, and in
some cases during the war, resurfaced in the tense political arena of the
immediate postwar years, when Japan was still under the control of
the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP). The restrictive
censorship policy of the early 1940S was not abolished at the end of
World War II; rather, it continued in the form of neglect of sexology and
sexologists in the immediate postwar period. The "purely scientific sex
education" (junkagakuteki seikyoiku) as propagated by sexologists in
the I920S 'vas rigorously replaced with "purity education" (junketsu
kyoiku), which was advocated by officials in the Ministry of Education,
representatives of the Ministry of Health and Welfare, and members of
newly founded sexological organizations.
The end of the empire brought other important shifts as well. Perhaps
the most significant was that the prewar and wartime obsession with the
uterus and female fertility was replaced by a new emphasis on the mu-
tual sexual satisfaction of both partners. This shift once again focused
on the female body-more specifically, on the clitoris and the vagina-
and on female orgasm. Wilhelm Reich (I974 [I936]) had optimistically
framed this shift as the "liberation of the female sex," while Henri Le-
febvre concluded that "women's road to freedom was via frigidity, or
worse: faked passion" (1995 [1962]:192). Foucault, in contrast, dis-
missed Reich's claims and simply noted that this shift was "nothing
I6 Introduction
more, but nothing less ... than a tactical shift and reversal in the great
deployment of sexuality" (Foucault 1990 [1978]:131). The Japanese
sexologists of the 1950S stuck to the older generations' rhetoric of lib-
eration, as I will demonstrate in chapter 5 and the epilogue.
Some of the details of my study may seem bizarre or even comical. As
I argue in the epilogue, however, some of the debates over sexuality in
Japan-specifically those over the approval of the anti-impotence drug
Viagra and the subsequent legalization of the low-dose pill in 1999, sex
education and its relevance for the prevention of HIV and AIDS, sex re-
search, and child prostitution-are again framed by the paradigmatic
structure developed in pre-World War II Japan. Sexuality is discussed as
a set of problems related to the necessity of defending and protecting
girls and women from men, the populace from certain diseases, and the
normal from the pathological. The liberation of sex is promoted to pro-
vide teenagers with more explicit sex education that includes informa-
tion on HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. Some participants
in these debates even demand the truth about the variety of sexual be-
haviors actually practiced, not just what the majority admits to engag-
ing in. The year 1992 was declared the First Year of Sex Education in Ja-
pan, by which time a media-generated AIDS panic had eased slightly.
Subsequently, the Japan Association for Sex Education moved from sup-
P9rting schoolteachers with advice and material on "purity education"
to providing more concrete instruction on HIV and AIDS prevention
to middle and high school students. Recently, child prostitution, euphe-
mistically termed "compensated dating" (enjokosai), has emerged as an
issue demanding urgent address. While it was initially portrayed as de-
viant behavior by a few female juvenile delinquents, the Japanese media
quickly suggested that thousands of "ordinary" female (and male) teen-
agers were willing to provide sexual services in exchange for expensive
presents. Once again the discourse of sex, fueled by the media, edu-
cators, and the state, not only revolves around the questionable moral-
ity of present-day youth, but ventures to suggest that their disturbing
behavior may reflect larger social problems occasioned by a modernity
gone sour.
CHAPTER I
Erecting a Modern
Health Regime
The military physician began to treat him with Salvarsan.
Syphilis was a severe illness in civil society, but particularly
so in the military. We nurses would whisper to one another,
"This one has the clap," or "That one has syphilis. Be care-
ful. Don't get too close." ... It was ironic that at the front
some soldiers suffered and eventually died from syphilis, here
where soldiers were severely injured and killed on the battle-
field every day.... The reason was that the military adminis-
tration had installed field brothels where comfort women
were available. So it was hard to think poorly of them. The
comfort women were treated at the military hospital just like
the soldiers. I could not blame soldiers for visiting the broth-
els in their free time.
Anzai Sadako, Yasen kangofu
Anzai Sadako's journal, a memoir of her experiences as a field nurse on

the Chinese front, contains many entries about disease and death among
the soldiers she treated. The frequently emotional descriptions of her
everyday experiences and impressions reflect broader concerns that had
helped to create concepts of the "national body" from the formation of
the Japanese nation-state in the I 870S onward. Calling upon an increas-
ingly complex configuration of bureaucrats, military officials, police,
physicians, pedagogues, and other men and women in public office,
these concepts focused on a populace to be regulated, protected, nur-
tured, and improved in order to establish what I will call a modern
"health regime."
This modern health regime was based on several sets of material and
imaginary physical entities. It tied individual bodies to the social body
I7
18 Erecting a Modern Health Regime
that during the late nineteenth century was mostly referred to as the "na-
tional body" and had been transformed, by the early 1940s, into the
Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. In this chapter I argue that the
first engineers of this health regime were most concerned with the "hy-
giene" of three groups-soldiers, prostitutes, and children- in various
attempts to protect and to improve the physical and mental condition
primarily of male subjects. Only during the late 1920S and early 1930S
did their attention shift to include other women and the population at
large. These engineers of "public hygiene" especially targeted sexual de-
sires, sexual development, and sexual practices, as well as what they
identified as the consequences thereof.
The condition of the "Japanese nation's body and soul" (Nippon
kokumin no nikutaimen to seishinmen) seemed critical in relation to both
the defense of Japan against Western colonial powers and the handling
of East Asia (see Lone 1994; Ogi, Kumakura, and Ueno 1990; Matsu-
bara 1993; Saito H. 1993). The notion of the national body appeared in
several guises. Whereas some theorists leaned toward social reform (sha-
kai kairyoron)" others intended to find more direct means for the "im-
provement of the race" (finshu kairyoron) in order to bring forth a civ-
ilized, modern, and above all, healthy population. These two approaches
to the establishment of a modern health regime, however, were not mu-
tually exclusive. In most treatises and public utterances, visions of social
reform overlapped with ideas of "racial improvement" and education.
The role of education in more or less systematic attempts at nation
building was debated widely among Enlightenment thinkers. In his fa-
mous work Encouragement of Learning (Gakumonno susume:J 1872),
Fukuzawa Yukichi, Japan's most prominent educator and philosopher
of the Enlightenment, made a strong case for education as an effective
means of achieving national progress. Roughly twenty years later Fuku-
zawa's position had become somewhat less optimistic and more remi-
niscent of the Lamarckian belief in the inheritability of acquired charac-
teristics. In a speech to a mixed group of teachers and students he said,
"If we endeavor to develop our good points and transmit these to our
descendants, who in turn cultivate them even more and pass them on to
their descendants, then there is no doubt that the descendents of even the
most ignorant will become heroes in the long run." However, he added
that one "cannot alter what a man has been endowed with by nature"
(quoted in Oxford 1973: 174). In another of his works, The Improve-
ment of the Race (Jinrui no kairyo:J 1896), Fukuzawa proclaimed that
Erecting a Modern Health Regime 19
good fathers and good mothers were crucial for the production of good
children. 1
When enthusiastically promoting the improvement of the national
body, some theorists singled out children, as Fukuzawa frequently did,
while others approached the same goal by focusing on women, or, more
specifically, mothers. Mori Arinori recast Fukuzawa's notion of good
mothers in exclusively physical terms when he urged mothers to preserve
their bodily strength. If they were weak, he argued, they would be un-
able to properly raise and protect their children, who were completely
dependent on them (reprinted in Braisted 1976:252-253). Although
Mori was perhaps the first and one of the most powerful educators of
the early Meiji period to emphasize the importance of healthy female
bodies in particular, other scholars and bureaucrats soon followed suit.
Taking up Mori's notion of physically healthy and strong women, Na-
gai Hisomu voiced his concerns about the improvement of the race in
slightly different and increasingly radical terms. An influential professor
of physiology at the Imperial University of Tokyo, Nagai first presented
his ideas on what he termed the "beautiful body" in 1907, in an article
printed in a scientific journal, and then more extensively in 1916 in
a 400-page treatise entitled On Humankind (Jinseiron).2 A review
of the theories and methods of racial hygiene filled about a third of
the book. According to Nagai and many other scholars of the time, the
"struggle of existence among the races" (minzoku to minzoku to no
seizon kyoso) was two-sided. One side concerned the size of the popu-
lation, the other its nature (Nagai 1916: 265). Although customs, edu-
cation, marriage practices, and reproduction rates were all important,
the improvement of the "quality of mothers' bodies" was most crucial
for the development of the Japanese race (Nagai 1916:288). About
twenty years later, Nagai became a key player in drafting racial hygiene
laws as a leader of the Japanese Association of Racial Hygiene, to which
I shall turn in chapter 5. Here I wish to point out the variety of ideas
about achieving the national body that existed during the late nineteenth
century.
Still other Japanese intellectuals emphasized the racial component
of physical differences that distinguished Japanese and non-Japanese
peoples and agreed that humankind was divided into yellow, white,
and black races. Accepting the view common among Western colonial
powers, they considered" blacks" inferior to "yellows" and "yellows" in-
ferior to "whites" (see Braisted 1976:439-446). Besides skin color, the
brain seemed to offer further clues to racial difference. Respected phi-

losophers such as Inoue Tetsujiro maintained that Western advantages
in skull and brain size would translate into a competitive edge over the
Japanese (see Gluck 1985:136). Physiologists who engaged in the cre-
ation of a "biochemical race index" claimed that the brain weight of
Asians-then considered an indicator of intelligence-was lower than
the brain weight of Caucasians but emphasized that Japanese men's and
women's brains were weightier than those of Chinese, Koreans, and
Formosans (Nagai 1928a:508 -509). Claims of racial difference that po-
sitioned the Japanese below Caucasians prompted debates about how
improvement would be possible. One theorist suggested that racial im-
provement was attainable through mass weddings between "whites"
and "yellows" (hakko or shiroki zakkonron) or blood transfusions to
enlarge the body (Takahashi Yoshio, quoted in Saito H. 1993: 132; see
also Ota 1976:143).3 Takahashi Yoshio's treatise The Improvement of
the Japanese Race (Nihon jinshu kairy6ron, 1884) was perhaps the most
radical on the subject of racial improvement. Takahashi, a protege of Fu-
kuzawa Yukichi, argued that blood and learning determine and influence
one another. 4 He also emphasized the importance of both character
building and physical exercise and pointed out the advantages of mixed
marriages between Japanese men and white women. While debates
about the improvement of the race were common throughout the Meiji
period, mixed marriages were not. Hence, Takahashi's suggestion pro-
voked intense criticism by contemporaries who doubted that mixing
races would result in an improvement of the Japanese race, arguing that
even if it did, it would take a very long time (see Ota 1976:49-50; Saito
H.1993: 1 3 2 ).
Takahashi's suggestion was not taken up by the authorities, but the
concern about the condition of the national body voiced by him and
other commentators governed the bureaucracy's immoderate interest in
controlling people's lives in general and their sexual behavior in partic-
ular and in accumulating and disseminating scientific data on both. 5
This interest eventually brought about the development of several pow-
erful instruments for channeling data into a state pool. Government in-
stitutions increasingly employed scientific knowledge to guide policies
aimed at producing well-regulated human bodies that would consti-
tute a better and more modern nation. Prompting the rise of statistical
thinking and of practices of quantification, Japanese bureaucrats, phi-
losophers, and scholars-and later, practitioners of medicine, psychia-
try, pedagogy, psychology, and sexology-developed a more complex
understanding of achieving the national body. The founding of the first

government Association for Statistics (Tokei Kyokai) in 1880 vividly re-
flected this development, as did the creation of various bureaucratic
units that began to carry out surveys and bring forth increasingly de-
tailed quantifications and classifications of Japanese society (Kawai T.
1989; Takeuchi H. 1989).
Nationwide surveys, conducted from the early Meiji period on and
motivated by efforts to build a powerful army and strengthen the econ-
omy, centered on what was perceived as beneficial and necessary for
the nation-state's development. This systematic documentation covered
agricultural production, population, topography, industrial production
and work, welfare and hygiene, education, and the poor (Kawai T.
1989: 13). Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the Meiji govern-
ment began to recognize the necessity of gathering data stemming from
statistical surveys and other social research on both the population and
resources in order to achieve nationalist and imperialist goals and, to a
lesser extent, to solve social problems. Social research institutes whose
main agenda was the investigation of social problems were created more
than thirty years after the Association for Statistics was founded, the
Ohara Research Institute for Social Problems (Ohara Shakai Mondai
Kenkyusho) being the most important among them. Their researchers
targeted particular social problems, surveying city life, Japan's colonies
in East and Southeast Asia, social classes and social mobility, women's
status, professions and work patterns, education, leisure and entertain-
ment, consumption, housing, poverty, and crime (Kawai T. 1989: 16).
The quantification and classification of the population's physical con-
dition was considered one of the most important tasks in establishing a
modern nation whose main characteristics were declared to be a pros-
perous economy and a potent military. As Stewart Lone has remarked,
the Japanese government, at least during the late nineteenth century, was
clearly more inclined toward a strong army than a rich nation (Lone
1994). Hence, the new methods of statistical research were first and
most extensively applied to matters that were considered relevant for the
establishment of potent armed forces, which in turn emerged as the pro-
totypical site and agent of the building of a modern Japanese health re-
gime. The army medical inspector general (rikugun gun~i sokan) inves-
tigated and closely monitored the condition of conscripts and soldiers
in more general terms. In civil society, the Central Sanitary Bureau be-
gan to gather data nationwide on health-related matters in general and,
more specifically, venereal diseases among prostitutes. A school hygiene
system provided schools all over Japan with the personnel and expertise
to examine and document the condition of Japan's youngest generation.
Until far into the twentieth century, data accumulated by these three
institutions-the Central Sanitary Bureau (later renamed the Bureau of
Hygiene), the office of the army medical inspector general, and the
school hygiene system-formed the foundation of administrative, med-
ical, and pedagogical concepts of the physical constitution of the Japa-
nese population and its future prospects. The average conscript served
as the prototype for the establishment of a "biochemical race index" of
the Japanese population and as a basis for prognoses regarding its po-
tential for improvement. Prostitutes, regarded as both despicable and
indispensable, emerged as the main carriers of venereal diseases (Mat-
suura 1912, 1926a-b, 1927, 1928, 1929; Nagai 1928b). Children ap-
peared as vulnerable and manipulable symbols of the future in terms
of hygiene and health, physical strength and national power. For many,
their "body building" resembled the larger task of empire building.
As formulated perhaps most influentially by Goto Shinpei (1857-
I927) in I889, the vision of a modern health regime adopted by the
Meiji state reflected a national body that resembled a human organism
and claimed an empire that was to be nourished, equipped, and nursed
like one. In his treatise Principles of National Hygiene (Kokka eisei
genri, I889), Goto emphasized the connection between a state's military
power and the health of its populace. Goto's vision of a healthy and mil-
itarily powerful nation was clearly influenced by Rudolf Virchow's con-
cept of "social medicine" (Soziaimedizin), Otto von Bismarck's model
of "social policy" (Soziaipoiitik), and Herbert Spencer's theory of the
nation as a "social organism." Goto argued that human beings were not
simply individual bodies but parts of a collective, which he termed "a
state as human body." He explained that just as animals use claws and
fangs to defend themselves, the national body should be equipped with
weapons. It also should have a public health system, just as other liv-
ing beings use their own means to take care of their well-being. Fur-
thermore, it should have the economic means to secure its mainten-
ance, just as other living beings have the ability to feed themselves (Goto
197 8 [ I88 9])
When Goto's book was published, he had been affiliated with the
Central Sanitary Bureau for fifteen years-an institution he declared to
be the heart of the administration of hygiene in the Meiji government
(Tsurumi I937:298, 351). The Central Sanitary Bureau (Eiseikyoku)
was established in I873 as part of the Ministry of Education. Its founder
and first director was Nagayo Sensai (1838-1902), another powerful

engineer of the social and administrative aspects of Japan's modern
health regime. He had studied medicine and had familiarized himself
with theories and models of public health administration in Europe. Na-
gayo coined the term eisei-a translation of the German term Gesund-
heitspflege or Hygiene-after a visit to Prussia in 1872 (Marui 1980:
99). Accepted as a member of the Monbush6 delegation to the Iwakura
mission in 1871, Nagayo left Japan in November of that year. After a
visit to Washington in January 1872, he reported that "the professors of
medical schools and hospitals treated [us] like children and [we] were
very angry" (quoted in Jannetta 1997: 159). He and several others left
the delegation, and Nagayo spent a month in England and then moved
on to Paris and Berlin. It was in Berlin that he first became conscious of
the sanitation or public health movement in Europe. Nagayo and other
leading hygienists realized that "public health" referred not only to the
protection of citizens' health, but to the entire administrative system
that was being organized to ensure that protection. This system reached
far beyond the traditional practice of medicine, with its focus on the re-
lationship between individual doctor and patient. Instead, it was a state
campaign aimed at society in the mass. It reached into the realm of pub-
lic works, which were the responsibility of the state. It relied not only on
medicine but also on physics, meteorology, and statistics, and it oper-
ated through the state administration to eliminate threats to life and to
improve the nation's well-being.
For health officials in Europe, and, from the 1870S on, in Japan, im-
provement and maintenance of public health meant draining swamps
and providing proper sewage disposal and clean water systems. It also
meant educating the public about hygiene and keeping records to docu-
ment the incidence of infectious diseases and the number of vaccina-
tions. It involved the surveillance not only of physicians but also of
local governments, which necessitated the collaboration of police de-
partments. This vision of building a healthy and strong Japan through
the offices of the state appealed enormously to Nagayo. Upon his return
to Japan he wrote a medical code that covered education, medical prac-
tice, and sanitation regulations. The Meiji government accepted the
code. The activities that Nagayo suggested administering centrally, how-
ever, were soon separated. Medical education remained within the Min-
istry of Education. Public health policies became the responsibility of the
Home Department and were administered by the Central Sanitary Bu-
reau (Jannetta 1997:158-160).
In 1874, the Central Sanitary Bureau was renamed the Bureau of Hy-
giene (Naimusho Eiseikyoku) and incorporated into the Home Depart-
ment, where it became the most powerful of seven departments. One-
third of the Home Department's budget was allocated to the bureau
(Tsurumi 1937: 303).6 However, according to Nagayo, the amount was
hardly sufficient to cover the costs of four divisions and a host of tasks.
The bureau distributed the regulations for doctors' exams in the prefec-
tures, was responsible for granting permission to open pharmacies, is-
sued the regulations for health examinations of prostitutes for venereal
diseases, and was responsible for various other hygiene matters (Tsu-
rumi 1937: 3 12).
The Office of Statistics (Tokeika) was an important part of the Bureau
of Hygiene. There, for the first time in Japanese history, the bureau's
public health administrators began to collect data on the constitution of
the Japanese national body. The careful inspection, measurement, and
documentation of public health (koshu eisei) was rooted in the hope of
finding explanations for the high infant mortality rate, the high number
of tuberculosis patients, and the spread of infectious diseases (Tsurumi
1937:303; Iwanaga 1994:79-118). The Bureau of Hygiene published
its data in lengthy reports every two years and later also in English trans-
lations (Naimusho eiseikyoku 1893-1894).
Between the 1880s and the 1920S, the bureau documented a steady
increase in mortality rates for infants less than one year of age. Public
health officials ascribed this alarming development to chronic infectious
diseases and what some of them perceived as the general deterioration
of social life, which was, in Japan and elsewhere, associated with urban-
ization and industrialization. During the second half of the 18 80S, the
average mortality rate of infants less than one year of age per 1,000 nor-
mal births was 117. By the early I890s, the number had increased to
147 per 1,000 normal births, and it reached 159 during the early 1920S
(SBHD 1929:98-100). In comparison with eighteen European coun-
tries and New Zealand, Japan ranked fourth lowest in the latter half of
the 18 80S. Ten years later, the rise in its rate put Japan in tenth place; by
1910 it ranked fifteenth. By I920, only Austria had a higher infant mor-
tality rate, and by 1924 Japan had the highest infant mortality rate
among these countries (SBHD 1929: IOI-I02).
A high tuberculosis death rate was similarly worrisome to public
health authorities. During the period under consideration, various forms
of tuberculosis remained by far one of the most common causes of death,
along with diarrhea and enteritis (SBHD 1929: I04; Lebzelter 1926:
823). When the spread of acute infectious diseases slowed by the turn
of the century, public health administrators shifted their focus toward
chronic diseases such as leprosy, venereal diseases, and mental illness.
Although less demanding of urgent attention-the mortality rate of
syphilis patients, for example, was generally about 10 percent of the tu-
berculosis mortality rate and never increased to more than 20 percent
(SBHD 1929:44-45)-chronic diseases were considered potentially
disruptive to social stability due to their impact on the family, which in-
creasingly became a central concern of Japan's bureaucracy.
The propagation of hygiene soon reached far beyond the boundaries
and authority of the bureau. This was due to the cholera epidemic of
1878 and 1879, spread by soldiers returning from the battlefields of the
Satsuma rebellion in 1877; to the founding of several hygiene institu-
tions in the Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto prefectures; and, later, to the in-
creasing number of publications on hygiene (Tsurumi 1937:3 11 , 319).
The definition of "hygiene" likewise expanded. For bureaucrats, mili-
tary officials, physicians, and pedagogues alike, hygiene became a con-
cept that not only linked but intrinsically intertwined rules of cleanliness
with those of morality, the health of the body with that of the mind, the
individual with society, and Japan with other modern nations (Imai T.
19 06 : 243 -245; Koide M. 1932: 18).
For sanitation personnel in the military, hygiene included no less than
knowledge of the importance of clean water, air, ground, and housing.
Appropriate care of sick and injured soldiers was another inlportant el-
ement. The discovery of the source and the prevention of "military dis-
eases" (gunbyo)-a euphemism for venereal diseases in the military-
made up an additional core element; a healthy diet and the correct main-
tenance of clothing, as well as a number of other factors that affected
military life, were considered equally crucial (Mori 1886, 1888, 1889,
1886-1891,1911).
For educators, hygiene came to cover all aspects of a child's devel-
opment. They described hygiene as proper "care and maintenance of
the body" (shintai no yoga) that went beyond the bare "survival in-
stinct" (seizonyoku; probably a translation of the German term Ober-
lebenstrieb). Proper care and maintenance was declared the basis of a
"moral person"; in fact, the care and tnaintenance of the whole self was
to be recognized as both "a virtue and a duty" (Imai T. 1906: 824).
Explanations of hygiene were integrated first into the manuals of mil-
itary doctors and the textbooks of military academies and later into
books for factory doctors and textbooks of ordinary secondary schools.
Under the banner of hygiene, cadets, soldiers, workers, and students

learned to keep their bodies and clothes clean, store food properly, mon-
itor their health, and make sure that enough fresh air and sunlight got
into their barracks, schools, factories, and homes (Koide M. 1932; Ya-
mai and Kinoshita 1982:376-378). Even booklets aimed mainly at in-
stilling patriotism and loyalty to the emperor contained chapters on
health and hygiene for adults and youth that were to be taken to heart
(Mori 1907; Goto I926:90-96).7
Numerous sites of the enactment of the new concept of hygiene
emerged during the Meiji era. In the remainder of this chapter, I will dis-
cuss three groups-soldiers, prostitutes, and children-that were par-
ticularly important because they strongly connected concerns about
health, sexual practice, and national security. Systematic examinations
in the Imperial Army and Navy enabled physicians to identify recruits
as a social group with a high rate of venereal disease infection, a matter
that eventually brought about the establishment of restricted-use broth-
els-mentioned in the epigraph to this chapter-that were controlled
and administered by the military. Similarly, the Bureau of Hygiene be-
gan a survey of venereal diseases among prostitutes in order to try to jus-
tify their segregation from the rest of society. Finally, the introduction of
a school hygiene system allowed school physicians to "discover" that
children suffered from all kinds of ailments, many of which, they in-
sisted, were caused by masturbation.
HYGIENE IN THE EMPEROR'S MILITARY
One of the most public manifestations of modern society has been the
ability to mobilize armies on a national scale. However, as I will argue
in the following pages, the modern national military was also one of the
core organizations for the development of hygienic thought and prac-
tice. The Imperial Army and Navy was the first institution to attempt the
administration and control of its members' sexual practices. The ad-
ministration of soldiers' access to commercial sex was guided predomi-
nantly by concerns about their physical and mental health. Except for
the women classified as "licensed prostitutes," whom I shall discuss in
the next section, no other group was as thoroughly monitored. Large-
scale survey data on the physiques of soldiers were used far into the
twentieth century to assess the "physical constitution of the Japanese."
Venereal diseases were first researched systematically in military hospi-
tals. Antibiotics for the treatment of these diseases (Salvarsan) as well as
devices for their prevention (condoms) were first introduced in the mil-
itary (Chuo Shinbun 1913; Hochi Shinbun 1916a; Tohoku Shinbun
1916; Nagai 1928a), and it "vas the authors of hygiene manuals for the
army and the navy who claimed that a combination of condoms and
drugs-e.g., creanlS that had to be applied to the genitals before and af-
ter sexual intercourse (Odajima 1943[1938]:381)-were the most effec-
tive methods of disease prevention.
The Conscription Decree (Ch6heirei sh6sho), promulgated on 28 No-
vember 1872 as an imperial edict, laid the cornerstone for Japan's abil-
ity to mobilize its forces on a national scale. According to the decree, sol-
diers were to be drafted from all over the country to form the Imperial
Army (Teikoku Rikugun), whereas the Imperial Navy (Teikoku Kaigun)
depended on volunteers. Their primary task was declared to be the "pro-
tection of the nation." 8 The conscription system was long disputed
among bureaucrats and ideologues, both before and after its introduc-
tion at the insistence of Yamagata Aritomo (1838-1922), then executive
head of the armed forces and future commander of the First Army in the
war against China. 9 Universal conscription was a revolutionary rather
than an evolutionary act, insofar as it dispossessed the samurai of their
arms monopoly and with it their status as a closed elite. Given that the
samurai never comprised more than about 7 percent of the population
and that their cultural norms relied on the outdated weapons of sword
and bow, they were inappropriate in both numbers and methods for the
kind of military organization required in modern war (Lone 1994: 17-
19 ). There was another logic behind the conscription system: In times
of war, conscription provided a larger number of soldiers who could be
swiftly drafted. During times of peace, men with military training who
had returned to civilian life did not burden the military budget because
they were not paid.
Some comlnentators insisted that a military of volunteers was prefer-
able to one of draftees, and the many reforms of the conscription sys-
tem, due in large part to the high number of young men avoiding the
draft, hint at military officials' discontent with the organization. How-
ever, critics who doubted the value of the conscription system typically
voiced their criticism in order to strengthen the military, rather than to
reorganize it. In 1882 Fukuzawa Yukichi thundered in his critique On
the Military (Heiron) that ten years after the introduction of conscrip-
tion, no more than 740,000 men were serving in the military at any given
time. Fukuzawa insisted that the Meiji government needed to invest
more money in the development of the military (see Kat6 Y. 1996: 20).
Erecting a Modern Health Regime
Fukuzawa and other critics of the conscription system accurately

pointed out the relatively low number of soldiers compared to the num-
ber of young men classified as fit for service at the beginning of the Meiji
period. In the first half of the Meiji era, only about one in thirty twenty-
year-old men was drafted. Thus the number of soldiers first increased by
less than 10,000 and later by about 20,000 per year. An increase in the
disputed military budget, however, soon provided for a considerable in-
crease in recruits. During the years from 1876 to 1880, the combined
budget of the Imperial Army and Navy reached nearly 10.4 million yen,
or 18 percent of the national budget (Kato Y. 1996:21). The number
of conscripts examined between 1873 and 1900 went from 2,300 to
53,000, and in the course of the following seventy years, the Imperial
Army and Navy grew to 5.9 million personnel, including officers and
troops (Drea 1998:75).
Recruiting districts served as the administrative areas for managing
the conscription process. The army medical inspector general was in-
stalled as the central authority for the physical examination of conscripts
(chohei kensa), a move that marked the rather direct connection made
by military personnel between the physical fitness of individual men and
the national goal of building a strong imperial military. Each year, all
twenty-year-old Japanese men had to report for this physical examina-
tion (see figure I). The military administration learned each conscript's
age, height, chest circumference, lung capacity, and weight from the ex-
aminations (which were held twice a year), and classified each of them
in one of five classes according to fitness for service (Rikugunsho 1894:
190-194). Classes A, B, and C were considered different degrees of fit-
ness for service. In class D were the "physically or mentally deficient,"
or those regarded as unsuitable for becoming soldiers, including crimi-
nals and dwarfs (Shimizu 1989). Young men in this class typically suf-
fered from what the examiners termed "thin and weak bones" or an "in-
sufficient development of the entire body." The examiners also noted
that industrial workers (particularly coal miners, glass workers, and
shoe factory and knitting mill workers) were in significantly worse phys-
ical shape than white-collar workers (Rikugunsho 1917: 5 I I; Tokyo
Asahi Shinbun 1917; Yomiuri Shinbun 1917). Class E men were ill at the
time of the annual physical examination and had to report for reexam-
ination and reclassification later that year or the following year (Drea
199 8 :7 8 -79).
The first systematic physical examination after the introduction of
conscription was carried out in Nagano prefecture. In December of
Figure I. Kurushima Takehiko's Everyday Use Encyclopedia 40: Indispensable

Army Handbook for the People (Nichiyo hyakka zensho dai yonjuhen: Koku-
nlin hikkei rikugun ippan) contained this idealized sketch of a conscript and
his examiner in a health examination office (Kurushima 1899: inside front
cover).
1874, data from the first examination were made available to military
administrators, and in 1876 the first nationwide data were published,
documenting 2.9 million conscripts, almost 18 percent of ,~hom were
classified as class A or B (Kato Y. 1996: 65 ).10 After 1902, Japanese con-
scripts in Taiwan, and later, those in Karafuto, Manchukuo, and Korea
were examined and drafted as well (see figure 2) (Kato Y. 199 6 : 15 5).
Figure 2. Men in the colonies had to travel to "mainland Japan" (Nihon no

naichi) in order to be examined~ Only when more and more people objected
to this procedure because of the high cost of travel were conscripts examined
and recruited in the colonies. After 1902, conscripts in Taiwan formed the
Taiwan Reserve Force, those in Karafuto the Karafuto Reserve Force, and so
forth (Kato Y. 1996: I5 5). According to a military law of I94I, twenty-year-
old Manshii men also had to undergo a health examination before they were
drafted to fight in Japan's imperialist war in East Asia. Photograph from Asahi
Gurafu S6kan: Warera ga Hyakunen (Asahi graph summary issue: One hun-
dred years of our history), 25 September I968: 120. Used with the kind per-
mission of the Asahi Shinbun.
During peacetime, only class A men-those taller than 1.55 meters and
in top physical condition-were eligible for conscription. Of these, an
average of 20 to 30 percent were actually drafted to do 120 days of ba-
sic training and not more than 35 days of additional service per year
thereafter (Drea 199 8 : 78) .
Recruitment officers and health examiners helped create the reputa-
tion of the male population in entire prefectures by documenting both
their willingness to join the military and their physical capability to do
so. They registered the conscripts' "character" (seishitsu) as simple and
naIve, took note of stubbornness and bigotry, and were quick to describe
as "lazy" and "effeminate" those who seemed to resent the military. In
V'~ ....~ ~
Ail :; ~
"... 1=t
'7 .st-
7-
~
:t
.!
It:
0
7 7- .::. '? A
)v :l: x ~:;
T ;y 0
7 ; ' ~~
7- It .Iv !JJ~ }- il~
?" A l- T =TY::r ~ 11
Figure 3 The physical examination of conscripts and numerous other military

scenarios were explained to the young readers of illustrated books and maga-
zines for children. This one is from the publisher Kodansha, Kodansha no
ehon: Nippon no rikugun (Kodansha storybook: Japan's army), I940: 52.
justifying their unfavorable evaluations of the conscript pool, recruit-

ment officers also noted when the number of draft dodgers or men who
"hated the military" was particularly high (Rikugunsho 1876: 83-88).11
While these evaluations of the conscripts' character served as a means to
probe their willingness to serve, "physical quality" was really what ex-
amination officers were looking for.
Upon entering the physical examination office, conscripts learned the
rules of the physical examination for conscripts. They were instructed
on proper bodily hygiene, cleanliness of their clothes, and proper main-
tenance of equipment received on the day of their recruitment, and were
warned not to attempt to escape recruitment. In addition to instruc-
tional pamphlets and posters providing warnings in recruitment offices,
nationwide campaigns appealed to the public to report persons who il-
legally attempted to escape military service or who neglected to register,
and reminded everyone that draft dodgers shamed the region (Kato Y.
199 6 : 1 59).
Many potential soldiers awaited the physical examination with mixed
feelings, and long after its introduction, draft evasion remained com-
monplace. After all, conscription had several worrisome implications
for the recruit and his family, some of which were similar to the impli-
cations of universal compulsory education-most obviously, the loss of
labor at home. When compulsory education was introduced in 1872,
many Japanese families perceived schools to be detrimental to their in-
terests because schooling robbed them of the use of older children's la-
bor during prime daylight hours for a period of four to six years. Fami-
lies were reluctant to enroll children in schools. Resistance took an active
form in some areas during the early Meiji years as protestors razed and
set fire to schools (Kosaka 1958:84; see also Uno 1999:40). Similarly,
for the families of the young men, recruitment implied a loss of labor in
times of peace as well as the risk of complete loss of their sons in times
of war.12 Moreover, neither martial spirit nor patriotism came naturally.
To many men and their families, to die for the emperor and the nation
seemed a strange idea, and resistance, at times violent, occurred all over
provincial Japan (Kato Y. 1996:46-47).
This lack of patriotism in the wider population and the lack of com-
mitment to the military service among recruits prompted military offi-
cials to take further steps. They tightened the regulations of the con-
scription system in 1883 and 1889 so that the categories of exemption
became increasingly limited. Yamagata also drafted the "Imperial Pre-
cepts to Soldiers" ("Gunjin chokuyu"), which was introduced in 1882 in
order to "instill virtues of loyalty to the emperor and love of the coun-
try." The Imperial Rescript was a long (2,70o-character) document dis-
tinguished by the use of such obscure Chinese characters that it was dif-
ficult even for a college graduate to read. The entire text was read to the
troops on special occasions, such as National Foundation Day (I I Feb-
ruary) or Army Day (IO March). Recruits also had to memorize and
recite on command a shorter version of the rescript, "Five Principles of
the Soldier" (Kurushima I899: inside front cover; see also Drea 1998:
8I-82).
Despite the threats by the military that were posted in recruitment
offices, and despite village announcement boards and attempts at indoc-
trination, young men employed several strategies to escape the military's
call, some of which centered on the physical health examination. Ac-
cording to Ohama Tetsuya, guidebooks on how to escape military ser-
vice were popular up to the eve of the Sino-Japanese war. The official
history of Tokyo explains that young students moving to the capital reg-
istered in certain wards where doctors would certify them as physically
unfit. In the far north of central Japan, there were even some who mi-
grated to the undeveloped island of Hokkaido to escape (see Lone I994:
I7-I8). Although it was a criminal offense if it was detected, some men
starved themselves in order to be underweight at the time of the exami-
nation. Others pretended that they could not see or hear well or even
injured themselves to escape the draft. Still others drank unhealthy
amounts of soy sauce to produce symptoms of heart trouble, and some
young men bought other people's birth certificates (Yomiuri Shinbun
I9I7). Recruitment officers of course were not ignorant of these illegal
practices. Quite the contrary, in their evaluations of the conscripts in
their districts they noted explicitly when young "unpatriotic men" (hiko-
kumin) attempted to "avoid the draft by using various illnesses as an ex-
cuse" (Rikugunsho I876: 87).
Those who were drafted were not always disappointed with military
life. Many realized that after the initial hardships of basic training, work
in the army had its advantages over farm work. Soldiers received rela-
tively good food, and those in their second year enjoyed a considerable
amount of free time. Furthermore, the army accepted only the men who
were the most physically healthy. Being drafted as a class A soldier
was considered a mark of status and an acknowledgement of top phys-
ical condition. Once drafted, military doctors kept close track of the
soldiers' physical development (Iizuka I968: 9 5; see also Drea I99 8 :
79, 89)
MONITORING SOLDIERS' HEALTH
The health examinations of conscripts and other health matters in the

military were administered by the Army Hygiene Council (Rikugun Ei-
sei Kaigi), which was directly responsible to the Army Ministry (Kuru-
shima I899: I7-I8). During the late nineteenth century, it found that
even class A conscripts were far from satisfactory to the military au-
thorities. Among others, Chief Military Physician Dr. Mori Rintar6
(I862-I922) set out to engineer the improvement of military hygiene in
both word and deed.
In several ways, Mori's career was similar to those of the leading
architects of Japan's modern health regime such as Nagayo Sensai and
Goto Shinpei. All three had studied medicine (Mori in the Medical De-
partment of the University of Tokyo) and were sent to Europe to further
their training (Mori was sent to Germany by the Army Ministry to study
military hygiene). Like Goto, Mori served in the army as a military phy-
sician and held a number of prestigious posts during his thirty-five
years of military service. For four years, he was instructed by Germany's
top hygienists, university professors Franz Hoffmann and Max von Pet-
tenkofer, and university professors and military physicians W. A. Roth
and Robert Koch, the founder of modern bacteriology. Mori served as a
military physician in the wars against China (I894-I895) and Russia
(I 904 - I 90 5) and remained in the service of the emperor's army until
I9I6 (Maruyama I984:vii-viii}.13
Mori's Army Hygiene Manual (Rikugun eisei ky6tei, I889) was pub-
lished by the Army Medical Academy (Rikugun Gun'i Gakko) exclu-
sively for military physicians and other military instructors, but his New
Book of Hygiene (Eisei shinhen, I897) addressed hygienists more gen-
erally. Both served as textbooks for military education. Mori wrote the
Army Hygiene Manual only one year after he had become an instructor
at the Army Medical Academy. The concept of hygiene, Mori explained,
included all practices that affected a person's health and aimed at health
preservation and improvement and the prevention of disease. He urged
military instructors and administrators to instruct soldiers on these ideas
because the military was an important state organization (Mori I889;
see also Maruyama I9 84:4 2, 85).
New concepts of military hygiene targeted not only the health ex-
amination procedures for recruits, cadets at military academies, and
soldiers on active duty but also the hygiene conditions in military bar-
racks. 14 In order to avoid the recruitment of sick men, examination
officers were reminded frequently to check conscripts' physical condi-

tion carefully, particularly for lung diseases, which had been epidemic
since the early Meiji years, and for skin diseases caused by cotton uni-
forms. By 1900, physical examination charts began to circulate in mili-
tary academies, cadets received special lectures on hygiene, and their
physical development was examined annually (Kaigunsho 1907: 150).
Newspapers began to report that due to the successful establishment of
hygienic thought and practices, the physical constitution of conscripts
improved steadily (Hochi Shinbun 1916a; Tokyo Asahi Shinbun 1917).
The Imperial Army and Navy's annual reports also proudly noted that
cadets were particularly heavy, well-built and well-fed compared to
other men in the same age cohort-conscripts were on average 1.65 me-
ters tall and weighed 58.6 kilograms (Rikugunsho 1917:577; Yamai
and Kinoshita 1982: 376 -378). By the beginning of the twentieth cen-
tury, the hygiene section of the armed forces' annual reports had ex-
panded to several hundred pages that meticulously listed the physical
condition of conscripts and soldiers serving in all parts of the Japanese
elnpire and included data on about fifty different diseases and types of
injuries (see, e.g., Rikugunsho 1917: 364-499).
SYPHILITIC SOLDIERS
In addition to the health examinations of conscripts and the annual ex-

aminations of cadets and other soldiers, medical personnel in military
hospitals and academies also carried out smaller-scale health examina-
tions. These studies confirmed that one in ten recruits, or several thou-
sand men, suffered from at least one of several kinds of venereal diseases
(karyubyo) (Fujikawa Y. 1908a:29; see also Rikugunsho 1894, 1897,
1917:505; Kaigunsho 1906:185,197:211,199:140).15 The most
common ones were gonorrhea, chancroid, and syphilis. Until effective
medication was developed, the diseases were treated with various baths,
painful injections, and treatments with special grasses and tinctures
(Kariya 1993:22-23). However, venereal diseases often remained un-
treated and had severely damaging consequences. Gonorrhea and chan-
croid were not life threatening, but syphilis was. Up until the end of
World War II, when effective medication became more widely available,
syphilis attacked every organ in the body. It caused repeated skin erup-
tions and ulcers, brought about hair loss and deterioration of the nose,
and in the final stages attacked the brain, turning the sufferer into a crip-
ple (Sone 1999:178). As the former field nurse Anzai Sadako reported,
patients eventually suffered loss of control over motor nerves, spinal

cord phthisis, or progressive paralysis, as well as nervous and mental ill-
nesses. Several entries in her memoir illustrated the lot of syphilis pa-
tients at the front. One of her stories read as follows:
There was this erotomaniac patient with cerebral syphilis in the field hos-
pital. He was quite a handsome man who had been in the war for six years.
He frequented the field brothels all the time and had contracted acute cere-
bral syphilis. He was already seriously ill when he came to the hospital.
Once he called out in a loud voice, "Come here, nurse. Come here!" I
thought that something had happened. When I went over to him he said,
"Your underpants look as if they may fall down any minute. Look, they are
falling. Come quick. Show it to me. If you don't show it to me your but-
tocks will turn black. Please, show it to me!" He began to cry. Then he
stopped all of a sudden. He wanted to tease us. Then he made a serious
face and began to sing an obscene song. When he stopped he began to un-
dress and do a striptease. (Anzai 1953 : 161)
In 1924, an average of 6 in I,OOO deaths in the population were as-

cribed to syphilis, with a wide range between regions-e.g., from eleven
in Akita and Nagasaki to one in Shiga and Fukui. This mortality rate
was comparable to those of other diseases such as dysentery (KRB
1927: I28 -129), and effective treatment was available only decades af-
ter 1909, when Paul Ehrlich and his laboratory assistant Hata Sahachiro
developed Salvarsan 606. 16 Salvarsan was a poisonous yellowish pow-
der consisting of an organic compound containing a small amount of ar-
senic and used in a dilute solution as a treatment for syphilis. At least in
military hospitals, Salvarsan injections became routine treatment by the
1940S.17 The mass production of the more effective penicillin, discov-
ered by the bacteriologist Alexander Fleming in 1928, became possible
only at the end of World War II.
The military health administration was interested in several charac-
teristics of venereal diseases in the army and navy. Among these were the
time of infection (before or after recruitment), the source of infection
(classified either as several "kinds" of women or as "other"), the mor-
tality rate of infected soldiers, and the cost of treatment. 18 Long-term
documentation of venereal disease cases in military hospitals reveals
that the rate of carriers of venereal diseases in the military increased
per 1,000 soldiers examined from 21.9 in 1912 to 31.1 in 1926 (KRB
1927: I). The army responded to the increase in venereal disease pa-
tients by ordering weekly medical examinations of thousands of men
and severely punishing those who were found diseased or seen entering
a brothel. During the first Sino-Japanese war, the medical staff issued
warnings that the Chinese were a promiscuous race and the country
was rife with syphilis (Kaigunsho imukyoku I900; see also Lone I994:
149-150). The Siberian expedition from 1918 to 1920 provided an-
other lesson for the Japanese army about the risk of venereal disease.
During those two years, I,387 men were killed in battle and 2,066 were
wounded, but venereal disease casualties reached 2,0 12 (Allen I9 84 :
594). Soldiers' diaries from the Russo-Japanese war ten years later, how-
ever, indicate that the army eventually authorized certain brothels and
even built others particularly for Japanese soldiers, in an attempt to con-
trol the sexual activities of soldiers and subjugate both soldiers and
prostitutes under the authority of military physicians. Thus, prostitution
within and outside of the military was geared toward the functionality
of male sexuality through the use of female bodies in order to secure the
power system within the military and over the empire. This practice was
no secret in civilian society and was hardly a bone of contention there.
Only occasionally did social reformers, most notably the Purity Society
(Kakuseikai) and some women's groups that organized for the abolition
of the licensed brothel systen1, criticize the establishment of brothels for
soldiers. The military administration remained unimpressed when the
monthly magazine Purity (Kakusei) published an article in which the
wife of a Diet member stated her opposition to that particular policy.
"As a mother," she declared, she would help her son escape the draft
rather than expose him to state-sanctioned military brothels (Hinata
I9 I I : 43). When the article was published in 191 I, the military esta b-
lishment had already begun to systematically establish brothels in the
vicinity of barracks (Chung 1997: 222-223).
Among the regulations of the use of these military brothels were the
following: Entry to a comfort house was authorized only for personnel
attached to the army. Personnel entering the house had to be in posses-
sion of a comfort house pass. Personnel had to pay the required fee in
cash and obtain receipts, in exchange for which they were given an en-
trance ticket and one condom. The cost of an entrance ticket was about
2 yen. 19 Ticket purchasers had to enter the room indicated by the num-
ber shown thereon. The consumption of alcohol inside the room was
forbidden and the use of a prophylactic solution was mandatory. It was
forbidden to have intercourse without a condom (Ito 1969:92-93).
Military administrations in Japan and elsewhere often justified this
policy as an antidote to civilian rape, a serious problem in war zones
everywhere, but particularly toward the end of 1937 during the occupa-
tion of Nanjing. At least as important a factor for the establishment of

restricted-use brothels, however, may have been the widespread and un-
questioned assumption that prostitution as a state-sanctioned institu-
tion was necessary. Men, and soldiers especially, had certain needs that
had to be catered to. In this respect the military did not differ from the
civilian male establishment. As much as military administrators strove
to avoid criticism of the troops' behavior outside of bases, at the front
or elsewhere in Japan's colonial empire, they were interested in protect-
ing the designated "protectors of the Japanese nation" from unlicensed
and thus potentially diseased prostitutes.
By the end of the 1930S, military-administered brothels were well es-
tablished and, in addition to Japanese women, Chinese, Korean, and
other women under Japanese colonial rule were forced into military sex-
ual slavery.20 There, ironically enough, both soldiers and prostitutes
were examined for venereal diseases and other illnesses by the same
doctors who collected data on both groups, albeit with a different de-
gree of rigor. Health checks among the enslaved women were carried out
mainly to prevent the infection of soldiers with venereal diseases. Ac-
cording to the survivors of the enslavement by the military, in some so-
called comfort stations the women were injected with so many drugs
that they had miscarriages, while in others no preventive measures were
taken and venereal diseases were not treated at all. In contrast to the un-
even attention given to venereal diseases, little or no notice was taken of
cigarette burns, bruises, bayonet stabs, and even broken bones inflicted
on the women by the soldiers {Jiigun ianfu I Io-ban henshii iinkai 1992:
73, 106; Schellstede 2000:7, 22, 54-55, 78, 117).21 Clearly, soldiers
mattered much more than the prostitutes, as former field nurse Anzai
pointed out in her journal:
The soldier ... was given a Salvarsan injection and all of a sudden could
speak again. As he thanked the physician, the physician told him to never
forget how he contracted the terrible disease in the first place and said,
"You have a wife and children, right?" The soldier replied, "Yes. I have a
wife and two children." "But still you like women and buy them frequently,
right?" "Yes, I am not a man who dislikes women." We nurses were very
embarrassed listening to this conversation and could say nothing. (Anzai
1953: 1 59)
As Anzai's memoir and other records show, appeals to soldiers about

the importance of preserving and improving their health were of limited
success. Between 1912 and 1925, army physicians treated an average of
more than 5,000 soldiers annually who suffered from at least one vene-
real disease (KRB 1927:68). Varying considerably throughout this pe-
riod, the number of patients ranged from a low of 4,370 in 1918 to a
high of 6,075 in 1922. The average number of venereal disease patients
in the Imperial Navy was considerably higher than in the army, but in
both branches, physicians claimed, the risk of infection depended greatly
on the area of deploYlllent (KRB 1927:68-69).
Another worry for the health administration, in addition to the sheer
numbers of patients, \vas the time of infection. Almost 90 percent of
these soldiers were infected after they had undergone the physical ex-
amination of conscripts and had been found fit for service, probably be-
cause they visited a brothel on the eve of induction, before entering the
hardship of barracks life (KRB 1927:70-71). As for the source of in-
fection, military physicians had to rely on information given to thetn
by the soldiers. The women they accused of infecting them with venereal
diseases were categorized into several groups, namely licensed prosti-
tutes (shogi)~ waitresses and barmaids (shakufu)~ geisha (geigi)~ factory
workers (k6jo), and wives (tsuma).
While female prostitutes were widely stigmatized as sources of dis-
eases that threatened men's health, shattered their families' happiness,
and potentially affected the physical and mental well-being of their off-
spring, military doctors and administrators drew direct connections be-
tween soldiers' venereal diseases and women in professions far beyond
the boundaries of (licensed) prostitution. Other young ,vomen, like wait-
resses or factory workers, "Those sexuality was considered uncontrolled
and uncontrollable by their parents and employers, were commonly
characterized as promiscuous by military and civilian officials alike. In
1888, when explaining the causes of venereal diseases among military
conscripts, a journalist in Nagano even suggested that "entertainers and
prostitutes, female servants, and kOlnori~ female factory workers, and
widows are all responsible for these diseases" (see Tamanoi 199 8 : 70).
And when the Tokyo Asahi Shinbun noted the rate of conscripts infected
with venereal diseases (four in a hundred), it urged the authorities not
to forbid soldiers access to prostitutes but to tighten control of unli-
censed prostitutes (Tokyo Asahi Shinbun 1917).
According to a study by the military inspector general, about 70 per-
cent of all recruits examined in 1920 and diagnosed with a venereal dis-
ease had reported a licensed prostitute or a waitress to be the source of
their venereal disease (KRB I927:73). Another study based on the ex-
amination of 5.28 million twenty-year-old men found that the number

of diseased soldiers was lowest among those who came from rural areas
without licensed quarters (one out of a hundred), followed by rural ar-
eas with licensed quarters (two out of a hundred). According to this
study, three out of a hundred young men who originated from urban ar-
eas were carriers of venereal diseases, whether they came from cities
with or without licensed quarters (KRB I927:79), confirming results of
other studies according to which venereal diseases were, at least for the
population of young men, primarily an urban disease.
Venereal diseases were troublesome for the military not only from the
perspective of national security but for economic reasons as well. The
period of treatment for a soldier diagnosed with a venereal disease re-
mained consistent at about thirty days. The military kept paying their al-
lowance during the time they were patients. The daily cost of one per-
son's treatment constituted an additional cost of 30 to 50 percent of
a soldier's daily allowance. For example, in 19 12, 337 patients received
an allowance of 6 1,294 yen, and another 24,58 I yen was spent for their
treatment. In 1921, when the average number of patients throughout
the year-509-was considerably higher, the allowance increased to
92,604 yen and the cost for treatment to 37,138 yen (KRB 1927:62-
63,66-67)
As military hygiene education regarding venereal diseases and pun-
ishment of infected soldiers by demotion or beating turned out to be
only partly effective, the authorities introduced more practical measures
(Jugun ianfu I Io-ban henshu iinkai 1992: 104; Senda 1978: 170). Con-
doms were made available for soldiers. During the late Meiji period,
condoms were imported mostly from the Netherlands and were distrib-
uted during and after the Russo-Japanese War (1904 - I 90S), until the
first condom made in Japan, the Heart Beauty (Hato Bijin), was intro-
duced in 1909. Japanese condoms first came into widespread use at the
beginning of Japan's aggression against China in 193 I, when soldiers
leaving their base were instructed to carry "hygiene matchboxes" (eisei
matchi)!J small boxes containing two condoms. From 1938 until the end
of World War II, rubber factories were put under the jurisdiction of
the military according to the National Mobilization Law (Kokka So-
doinho). Subsequently, condoms became legally classified as "munitions
of war" (gunjuhin). Especially considering the contemporary debates
about the availability and legality of contraceptives in civilian society,
to which I shall turn in chapter 4, it is important to note that by the end
of the 193 os, condoms were distributed in large quantities to soldiers.

They were not classified as contraceptives, but solely as a means of pre-
venting venereal diseases.
Condoms were accounted for and distributed by the Army Ministry's
Bureau of Supplies and named according to imperialist practices, e.g.,
Attack Number One (Kogeki Ichiban) and Attack Champion (Totsugeki
Ichiban) for the Imperial Army and Iron Cap (Tetsu Kaputo) for the Im-
perial Navy (Ota 1976:266; Jugun ianfu 11o-ban henshii iinkai 1992:
74; Watanabe Kazuko 1994; Chung 1997: 229). They were specifically
ordered by regiment commanders and distributed for use at the comfort
stations. Ways to enforce the use of a condom, however, were of course
limited, and practices varied from camp to camp. In 194 2, 32 million
condoms were distributed to the Japanese military, which meant a ra-
tion of twenty condoms per man each year. In some places, condoms
also could be bought locally, and the managers of the comfort stations
often provided condoms as well. In other camps, though, condoms were
unavailable for long stretches of time, or soldiers washed and used them
several times (Hayashi H. 1993: 17; ]ugun ianfu 11o-ban henshii iinkai
199 2 :74; Schellstede 2000:22,54-55).
As a result, most of the more than 100,000 girls and women enslaved
by the imperial forces and held in the comfort stations were infected with
all kinds of diseases. Lured by false promises of employment, coerced,
or simply abducted by military and police authorities, these women were
forced to work as nurses, cooks, waitresses, and seamstresses during the
day and were regularly raped and beaten, sometimes to the point of se-
rious injury, by dozens of soldiers, only to be killed or abandoned at the
end of the war. Moreover, they were not the only ones to suffer in this
way: Women who engaged in prostitution unrelated to the military cer-
tainly did not do so out of "free will." Many were sold by their fathers
and brothers or fled poverty or an abusive family only to eventually be
stranded in a brothel within or beyond Japanese borders.
The system of forced prostitution was not unique to Japanese impe-
rialism. 22 The comfort station system was not an exclusively Japanese
invention; neither was it a military matter only.23 The system was an
extreme form of the colonization of sex and was closely intertwined
with debates about and practices of the control of prostitution in civil-
ian society at the time. 24 It is to these debates that I will turn in the next
section.
FRAMING PROSTITUTES
We never forgot to disinfect ourselves when the man

was done. Near the bed in the corner of the room was
a basin filled with a red disinfectant solution. Each
time we finished we would carefully wash both the
man's and the woman's private parts and wipe them
with tissue paper. Because this solution chilled us
inside, we prostitutes hardly ever got pregnant. They
said it was to see if we had contracted a disease, but
every seven days, without fail, we had to go to the
hospital for an examination. Syphilis-if you had that,
you know, your body would rot. Your whole body
would be covered with pustules and you would die a
terrible death, or else you would go mad. We never
missed an examination, because we didn't want that to
happen to us.
Yamakawa Saki
As former karayuki-san Yamakawa Saki reports, by the time of Japan's

second war against China, prostitutes were well aware of the severity of
venereal diseases. 25 The system of health policies that singled out pros-
titutes as a source of disease was well established, because until the late
1920S the hygiene authorities in the Home Department were convinced
that only the control of prostitutes could curb the spread of venereal dis-
eases in both the army and the wider population. It took the health ad-
ministration several decades and an enormous amount of data about
the causes, the paths of infection, and the cures of venereal diseases
to acknowledge that the diseases could not be contained by regulating
prostitutes.
Attempts at systematically examining prostitutes were made in early
modern Japan (Fujime I997; Burns 1998). Nationwide regulations for
the health examination of prostitutes-genital inspections and the ex-
amination of uterine secretions-were first introduced in I876. How-
ever, only at the beginning of the I930S was the long-held understand-
ing that venereal diseases (now: seibyo) were a "civilization disease"
(bunmeiby6)~ rather than a "disease of the red-light districts" (formerly:
karyubyo), transformed into quasi-legal measures (Abe I924b; Ame-
miya 1928; Tagawa I928; Doi I934).
In order to inspect for gonococcus, doctors extracted uterine secre-
tions with a loop, transferred them to a glass, and heated them over a
burner. A liquid dye was added, then the specimen was rinsed with wa-
ter and examined under a microscope. Syphilis inspections became more
reliable when doctors began to use the Wassermann reaction in the
1910S.26 Inspection for gonococcus usually took place once a week,
those for syphilis once a month or once every two months. In both cases,
a regular schedule was observed. According to a former inspector for the
u.s. colonial Department of Sanitation in the Philippines who inspected
Japanese prostitutes for syphilis from 1919 to 1921, those women who
did not pass the inspection had to stop work until the following week.
They were then hospitalized in the Oriental Hospital fun by the colonial
government. Gonococcus inspections cost three yen per visit, and syph-
ilis inspections were ten yen per visit. The prostitutes paid the fees. In-
spections were compulsory; prostitutes who did not show up were fined
thirty yen for each missed inspection (Yamazaki 1999 [1972]:70).
The nationwide regulations in Japan for prostitutes' health examina-
tions were frequently tightened as part of the Regulations for the Con-
trol of Prostitutes, the Regulations for the Enforcement of the Law for
the Prevention of Infectious Diseases, or the Law for the Prevention of
Venereal Diseases (Fujikawa Y. 1911:112; SBHD 1929:3). Article 425
of the Penal Code, promulgated in July 1880, called for three to ten days
of imprisonment or a fine of between one yen and 1.95 yen as punish-
ment for secret prostitution or lending premises to persons for the pur-
pose of assisting secret prostitution (De Becker 1905: 301). A stricter set
of Regulations for the Control of Prostitutes issued by the Home De-
partment on 2 October 1900 prescribed a preliminary medical examina-
tion by a physician as part of a formal application, submitted to the po-
lice station, to become a registered prostitute (De Becker 19 0 5 : 336).
These regulations also called for frequent mandatory health exami-
nations for all registered prostitutes and the hospitalization of those
affected with a venereal disease. On 10 October 1900, a notification re-
garding the medical inspection of prostitutes (superseding the notifica-
tion of March I894) prescribed that all prostitutes were to undergo both
regular and special inspections. Regular inspection was to take place
once a week. Special inspection was obligatory under several other con-
ditions: when a woman became a prostitute, when she had been resting
outside the brothel and wanted to resume working as a prostitute after
a lapse of seven days or more, when a hospitalized prostitute had re-
covered and was about to resun1e work, when a woman discovered that
she was infected, and when a special inspection was considered neces-
sary or expedient by a physician. Infected women had to seek proper

treatment or face a fine of up to 1.95 yen (De Becker 195: 346). These
new regulations also prescribed the brothel keeper's responsibility con-
cerning the health of prostitutes. Brothel keepers were not supposed to
infringe upon regulations relative to physical examinations and were
supposed to advise ill prostitutes to seek medical advice and treatment
(De Becker I90 5: 293).
The Law for the Prevention of Venereal Diseases (Karyiiby6 Yob6
H6) of 4 April 1927 categorized venereal diseases as syphilis, gonorrhea,
and chancroid (SBHD 1929: 5). The Bureau of Hygiene documented
a whole set of statistics on prostitutes and their environment. Among
other information, it carefully recorded the number of prostitution quar-
ters (yukaku) in each prefecture; the affected cases classified by disease;
and the affected cases per 100 examinations. By the end of the 1920S,
482 health examination offices and 223 hospitals for prostitutes (shogi
byoin) served 535 prostitution quarters (SBHD 1929:2I3-217).
In 1930 alone, 2.9 million health examinations were performed on a
daily average of 47,436 prostitutes. Among these 2.9 million examina-
tions there were 69,277 positive diagnoses for one of nine categories of
disease: syphilis, gonorrhea, chancroid, ulceration, contagious skin dis-
eases, tuberculosis, leprosy, trachoma, or "other diseases." More than
two-thirds of the prostitutes with positive diagnoses suffered from at
least one venereal disease, most commonly gonorrhea (34,798) and
chancroid (I 6,3 69), while considerably fewer (4,297) suffered from
syphilis (SBHD 1929: 61, 213). On a national average, two in a hundred
prostitutes were diagnosed with at least one venereal disease at regular
health examinations, while between one and three in a hundred were
hospitalized (KRB 1927: 114-1 15).
The steadily increasing number of examinations, from 1.77 million in
1896 to 2.9 million in I930, demonstrates the great importance for the
national body that the hygiene administration placed on the health ex-
aminations of prostitutes. In 1896, 4.06 percent of those examined were
diagnosed as infected, while the official infection rate in 1930 was only
2.17 percent of those examined (Naimush6 eiseikyoku 1893-1894,
1895, I897, 1900, 1910, 193 0 ).27
This development, however, may have been related to the establish-
ment of hospitals for prostitutes, which resulted in less frequent exami-
nation of the same infected prostitutes. Some prostitutes may have un-
dergone the examinations several times a year while others avoided the
examination offices entirely; because it was examinations, not persons,
Figure 4. By the late 1920S, information on the consequences
of and advice for the treatment of venereal diseases domi-
nated medical and household journals. Popular Medicine
(Tsuzoku Igaku), for example, regularly printed instructive
articles and chose "Prostitution and the Problem of Venereal
Diseases" as its theme for the November 1926 issue. (For ex-
tensive coverage of venereal diseases, see, e.g., Tsuzoku Igaku
January 1930: 161, September 1930: 129, August 1933: 124,
February 1935: 170, August 1942: 80.) Used with the kind
permission of the Kyoto Ika Daigaku Library.
that were counted, it is unclear how great the number of infected pros-
titutes was. Apart from that, the examinations first became mandatory
on 18 July 1926 with the enactment of the Venereal Diseases Preven-
tion Bill (Karyubyo Yobo Hoan), but they were systematically applied
only to registered prostitutes (Murakami 1926). Illegal prostitutes were
estimated at several tens of thousands (Kagawa 1926: 8). According
to a 1925 official count, there were 48,291 barmaids and waitresses
who worked in the coffee houses and dance halls built during the late
1920S and 1930S, and they were also rumored by the sensationalist me-
dia to have wild sex lives. However, they were just as neglected in the
official health statistics as the 79,348 (I925) geisha, three-quarters of
whom, according to estimates, likewise engaged in prostitution (Garon
1993 b :7 12 ).
Special hospitals for the treatment of prostitutes with venereal dis-
eases were first founded in Tokyo (I874), Osaka (1879), and Kyoto
(1886), and a few years later in other prefectures and seaport towns
(Kariya 1993: 144). Because the prostitutes' savings rarely covered the
hospital costs, the brothels for which they worked were supposed to
prepay the costs (Kariya I993: 147). While this arrangement officially
was tolerated out of a desire to control and regulate prostitution, or
rather, the prostitutes, the courts that dealt with the cases of prostitutes
forced them to pay back their debts to brothel keepers, a practice that
suggests the legislation protected the trade more than the prostitutes (De
Becker 1905: 366-367). In 1927, 1,854 patients from the previous year
and 58,308 new patients were treated in hospitals for prostitutes located
all over Japan. Most of them were treated in hospitals in Osaka prefec-
ture (835), Tokyo prefecture (637), and Kyoto prefecture (371), fol-
lowed by the Nagasaki, Fukuoka, Mie, and Aichi prefectures (SBHD
I929:266-268).
Joseph E. De Becker, an international lawyer who spent most of his
life in Japan and wrote several books on the Japanese legal system, em-
phasized that these low figures must be regarded with great suspicion.
They not only contradicted the experience of medical practitioners in
other countries but also were misleading in light of the statistics pub-
lished by the Yoshiwara Hospital in Tokyo, where the number of in-
fected prostitutes was considerably higher. 28 Indeed these suspicions
were confirmed by examinations that were carried out beyond the aus-
pices of the Bureau of Hygiene. In Kanagawa prefecture, more than
5,000 infections in 36,000 examinations were recorded in 1880 (Kariya
I993:I54-I55). In an examination in I9I4, the recorded syphilis and
gonorrhea infection rates among the examined prostitutes was as high

as 20 percent (Takemura T. 1980: 148). In addition to its other conse-
quences, gonorrhea was the cause of incurable internal diseases and, in
many cases, infertility, particularly for women. Syphilis also took a
significant toll on prostitutes' bodies, and it and its complications were
the most common causes of death among prostitutes (Sone 1999: 178).
Most civilian physicians in modern Japan agreed with their military
surgeon colleagues that licensed prostitution was a necessary evil that
served as a safety valve against rape, seduction, adultery, "unnatural
vices," and illicit prostitution. They also pointed out that the rate of
syphilis cases had diminished considerably after the system of inspection
and control was inaugurated. Medical doctors throughout the Japanese
empire affirmed that since the introduction of inspection and enforced
hospitalization, the lTIOre severe types of syphilis had become less com-
mon (Mori 189 I: 207). European medical practitioners also noted that
syphilis among the Japanese was exceptionally mild and severe cases
were rare. Whereas prior to the Meiji era it was quite common to see
people whose noses had been eaten away by syphilis, one author noted,
this sight had become uncommon by the beginning of the twentieth cen-
tury (De Becker 190 5 :312-313).
However, not everybody embraced the health examinations for pros-
titutes. Some hygienists, medical doctors, and proponents of the pro-
hibition of public prostitution criticized the examination policies on two
fronts. They argued that the legislation for the health examination of
prostitutes reinforced the view in the wider population that only pros-
titutes were carriers of venereal diseases (Ieda 1936). Another concern
was that it lulled potential brothel customers into the false belief that
they were safe from venereal diseases because the prostitutes were ex-
amined, while in reality-these critics speculated-only half of the reg-
istered prostitutes underwent frequent examinations (Matsuura 1912,
1927; Murakami 1926; Yutani 1932).
The conditions in the hospitals for prostitutes further discredited the
government's health policies. After a prostitute had been in the hospital
for three or four days, if she happened to be a popular woman, some
brothel keepers bribed the hospital to have her discharged as soon as
possible. Doctors and nurses in hospitals for prostitutes were poorly
trained and may have given a clean bill of health to women infected with
venereal diseases. De Becker also suggested that the low salaries paid in
hospitals for prostitutes were unlikely to tempt the most capable medi-
cal practitioners to remain in service for any length of time (De Becker
19 0 5 : 3 57) Moreover, physicians sometimes discovered cases that

would have been impossible to conceal from an examiner. In those
cases, brothel keepers requested counterfeit certificates stating that a
change of air was necessary for a woman's health. Armed with these cer-
tificates, keepers pretended that the patient had gone into the country,
when in reality she was carefully hidden in the brothel and secretly
treated by a physician (De Becker 1905: 366).
While both soldiers and prostitutes were examined for venereal dis-
eases by state authorities out of a concern for the national body, the pro-
cedures applied to both groups as well as their effects could not have
been more different. Venereal diseases appeared prominently in military
records and reports, but they represented only one type of a few dozen
diseases soldiers were checked for. By the end of the Meiji era, the ex-
aminers of soldiers' bodies had produced the most comprehensive stock
of data ever made available to population planners in Japan, symboli-
cally representing the normal and normative Japanese physique and
widely used in comparative physiological treatises. Along with many
other techniques of health improvement and preservation, physical ex-
aminations of conscripts-and through them, of the Japanese populace
at large-clearly served to standardize and optimize their health and
fitness.
Health examinations of prostitutes, in contrast, focused on venereal
diseases. Hence, while attempts were made to detect venereal diseases
by means of periodic inspections, internal diseases often were ignored,
and brothel keepers forced women suffering from syphilis and other dis-
eases to continue their work (De Becker 1905:354-357). Despite the
frequently repeated claim that prostitutes were necessary to contain the
overflow of men's sexual needs, they were declared a source of disease
and a health hazard to men and their innocent wives and children, and
thought of as the latrine of the modern state. Thus their health was not
considered worthy of protection or improvement for its own sake. The
women themselves were considered negligible and could be (and were at
times) disposed of.
Only between the implementation of the General Mobilization Law
(Kokka S6d6inh6) in 1938 and the Law for the Strengthening of the Na-
tional Body (Kokumin Tairyokuh6) in 1941 did legislation for the pre-
vention of venereal diseases undergo a significant shift away from the fo-
cus on prostitutes and toward coverage of the entire population. Then,
the largely preventive policies of the late nineteenth century were grad-
ually substituted for by proscriptive legislation that culminated in the
implementation of the National Eugenic Law, which I shall discuss in

chapter 5. Before eugenic concepts came to the fore, however, Japanese
physicians, pedagogues, and bureaucrats turned their attention to chil-
dren, who they carne to perceive as another pillar of the modern health
regIme.
EXAMINING CHILDREN'S BODIES
Children, Masuda Hason noted in his Social History of Children (Jido

shakai-shi) in 1924, have not been cherished or loved by all cultures at
all times. On the contrary, whether in China, Western countries, or Ja-
pan, instances of abandonment and infanticide had been common. Writ-
ing his book at a time of intense discussions about and significant im-
provements in children's health and education, Masuda described the
Edo period (16 12 - 1867) as an era in which duty and filial piety on the
part of children overshadowed concern about their well-being (Masuda
19 24 : 229 - 230). In his book, lvlasuda was concerned primarily with
the ideals of a warrior class parent-child relationship. However, ordi-
nary children's relationship to their parents and their role in the house-
hold began to undergo significant changes as well when-in addition
to barracks and brothels-schools and other institutions of education
and training became further sites for the enactment of the new concept
of hygiene.
By founding public schools and mandating first four, then six years
of education for children of both sexes, the Meiji government aimed at
controlling the socialization process in order to further state goals. To
begin with, the introduction of compulsory education in 1872 (at the
same time conscription was introduced) had a negative impact on the
household division of labor and on family livelihood. This stirred resis-
tance to state policy, mainly among ordinary households that were de-
pendent on their children's domestic or wage-earning labor for their sur-
vival. The government adopted various strategies, such as reducing the
duration of compulsory education, lowering tuition, and founding spe-
cial institutions to educate poor children and soothe aggrieved families,
to counteract this resistance. It likewise continued to promote school en-
rollment and to send out truant officers to compel school attendance. By
the early twentieth century, enrollment rates suggested that ordinary
families throughout the nation had come to accept compulsory school-
ing. However, registration rates may have suggested a brighter picture
than was the reality. Autobiographies and oral histories reveal that chil-
dren of all ages were routinely kept home from school when their fami-
lies required extra labor (Uno I999: 39).
Throughout the late nineteenth century, pedagogues urged teachers
and parents to vigorously impress upon children the virtues of cleanli-
ness (Watanabe Y. I886; Dai Nihon Kyoiku Zasshi I888). However,
while the battle against infectious diseases had taken off in the I880s-
when the police became one of the chief protectors of public hygiene and
were given the responsibility of isolating patients, intercepting traffic,
and in other restrictive ways trying to prevent the spread of infectious
diseases-effective hygiene regulations for children were only put in
place at the end of the I890S. The results of a fact-finding mission of
officials from the Ministry of Education in schools all over Japan re-
vealed that children were shockingly weak and suffered from all kinds
of diseases. Claiming children as agents of hygiene and at the same time
styling them as vulnerable victims of social menace, pedagogues and
medical doctors insisted that children needed to be measured, protected,
and instructed for their own good and for the welfare of the nation. Sub-
sequently, pedagogues and physicians began to promote a program of
physical exercise and cleanliness to balance the emphasis on scholastic
training that dominated school education at the time. In I898, a set of
policies for the prevention of infectious diseases and disinfection in
schools came to replace the simpler rules of cleanliness that had been
part of the School Regulations (Seito kokoroe) of I8?? (Naka I9??:
202; Okamoto I982: I24; Nomura I990; Muta I992).
According to this new set of policies, the most worrisome diseases
that affected children in schools included measles, whooping cough,
influenza, mumps, German measles, and chicken pox. Tuberculosis and
skin and eye diseases were also common but not specific to children. At
schools, preventive measures and hygiene measures were introduced
and developed at the initiative of Mishima Tsiiryo, an official in the Di-
vision of School Hygiene in the Ministry of Education. From the early
Meiji years onward, the general school regulations had prescribed that
children with certain diseases be denied admission, but only under the
guidance of Mishima were important steps taken to improve hygiene
conditions in schools and prevent the infection of children there.
A new committee of school hygiene was founded in the Ministry of
Education in I 897. The committee consisted of nine people from the
fields of medicine and hygiene. Mishima became its first president. The
committee's achievements were numerous. Regulations for elementary
school equipment were introduced in I892; regulations for school ar-
chitecture followed in 1894; the School Cleanliness Law and the Physi-
cal Examination Guidelines of School Students (which substituted for a
physical strength exam from 1889) were passed in 1898; and a hygiene
system for public schools established in I899 was expanded in 1900 to
include all other types of schools and kindergartens. These achievements
laid the foundation not only for healthier children but also for more
children surviving into adulthood (Naka 1977: 205). In 1901, Mishima
became responsible for the Division of School Hygiene in the Ministry
of Education, which had been established in 1898 by imperial decree as
the central authority in a new system of school physicians. It gave a new
type of physician, the specialist in children's health, complete access to
the bodies of children and adolescents. Medical specialists in children's
health had existed before pediatrics was established as an academic field
in Japan, but Tokugawa-era and early Meiji specialists typically had
been trained in Chinese medicine. The first courses in pediatrics were
taught at the University of Tokyo in 1888 but research on children's
health in Japan began only around I900 (Naka 1977: 203).
Although the school hygiene system was built much slower than
Mishima had hoped, with 30 percent of schools covered in 1902 and
80 percent of schools covered in 1918, the system received international
praise as early as 1904. At an international convention on hygiene in
Brussels, the director of the Belgian school hygiene division noted of
the Japanese system that the world was now to learn from Japan rather
than the other way around (Naka 1977: 206). By 1902, more than
9,000 school physicians had been hired. Of these, 8,700 worked at pri-
mary schools, which about 55 percent of the children under the age of
eleven attended, while the others were affiliated with teacher seminars,
middle schools, and girls' schools (Leuschner 1906: 790-93). These
physicians did not merely inspect the schools, but also sought opportu-
nities to invite pupils and parents to discuss sanitary matters related to
their homes. It was this system that prompted an English admirer of Ja-
pan's "national efficiency" to declare that "nothing is neglected in the
calculations to improve the national physique and provide Japan with
able-bodied citizens in every branch of national life" (Stead 190 5: 133).
During the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-1895, the quality of boys'
bodies became especially crucial for the strength of the nation, and "mil-
itary-style exercise" (heishiki taiso), advocated since the early days of
the Imperial Army and Navy, was practiced in secondary schools (Tsuji
1884; Omura 1886; Kojima 1942). Many Japanese intellectuals of the
time were already familiar with the social Darwinist idea of the survival
of the fittest. At wartime in particular, the ideal of not only a strong

army but an army of strong men was propagated. The short stature and
physical weakness of Japanese troops in 1894 was a major concern for
the forces, and many found that this concern could best be addressed in
the schools. Outgoing Education Minister Inoue Kowashi (known to his
opponents as the "nervous minister") took the initial step of ordering
more physical exercise for elementary schoolchildren, as well as military
exercises accompanied by the singing of war songs for more advanced
elementary boys. Pupils also were encouraged to lead a healthy lifestyle,
and those who lived in towns and habitually took a carriage to school
were advised to walk (Lone 1994: 96 -97). In this way, children rapidly
became a critical resource for the production of knowledge and the de-
velopment of pedagogical theories. Children allowed access to a means
of controlling and guiding society. Symbolically, they united a number of
agents who helped achieve a modern health regime. Representatives of
psychology, pedagogy, and medicine assigned a key position to children,
their education, and their health care.
School hygiene programs were implemented mainly to control the
spread of infectious diseases that particularly affected children but also
to fight the spread of tuberculosis and tracheitis, which had occurred in
epidemic proportions after the Sino-Japanese War. Children were told
not to use the handkerchiefs or towels of other children and, in moral
education and sports classes, were educated about the principles of
cleanliness and instructed to take care of their bodies. By official decree,
all children were examined twice a year. As with the health examina-
tions of conscripts and soldiers, data on primary school pupils were
carefully documented. Their height, weight, chest circumference, gen-
eral constitution, sight, and hearing were systematically measured. The
results of these measurements and all illnesses diagnosed were noted in
a student's graduation certificate, which had to be produced at the
entrance examinations for secondary schools (Narita 1995:68). At the
beginning of the twentieth century, illnesses, morphology, and athletic
abilities were central in these examinations, which became ever more de-
tailed. Pupils were examined for a long list of conditions including scrof-
ula, malnutrition, anemia, beriberi, pulmonary tuberculosis, headaches,
chronic diseases, nervous dejection, and exhaustion. Newspapers fre-
quently reported the results of these examinations, pointing out the im-
provement of the physical constitution of girls and boys. Attributing
health and national strength to children's increasing height and weight,
newspapers noted with satisfaction that upper-class children especially,
Erecting a Modern Health Regime S3
:3
.11
..'
Figure 5. Children's textbooks, storybooks, and magazines em-

phasized the importance of proper hygiene for children. The back
cover of this Kodansha storybook from 1940, for example, fea-
tured an advertisement for a toothpaste, but also urged children
to "play well," "eat well," and "sleep well." This particular copy
was available at a dentist's office.
and girls in particular, were becoming taller (Chuo Shinbun 1913; ] iji
Shinp6 1914; Shimada 1914; Yomiuri Shinbun 1915a, c; Tokyo Asahi
$hinbun 1916; Hochi Shinbun 1916b).
School physicians and pedagogues referred to these examinations
when they reported that children and adolescents in urban areas suf-
fered from headaches, exhaustion, melancholia, a pale complexion, or

other forms of unsatisfactory physical or psychological development.
When at the beginning of the twentieth century pedagogues and medi-
cal doctors began to accept the "discovery" of the sexual instinct in chil-
dren, they not only blamed overwork, bad air, and the lack of exercise
but also "psychological exhaustion" (shinkei no karo), neurasthenia,
and masturbation for these ailments (Shimoda 1904a:415 -42Q; Mi-
yako Shinbun I9I7).
By the beginning of the twentieth century soldiers, prostitutes, and
children were-to different degrees and in different ways- represented
in and incorporated into a complex set of power relations. These power
relations were created by the quest for knowledge and surveillance, as
well as ultimately for control and the desire to refashion the physique
and psyche of imperial subjects and-by extension- of the empire.
Considering that soldiers featured prominently in these attempts, it is
not surprising that the language of the health regime's engineers was in-
herently militarist and expansionist. Administrative control was exer-
cised and extended in order to "protect" and "defend" the soldiers from
prostitutes, the children from themselves, and the empire from its patho-
logical subjects. Sex became the locus of these struggles, which were in-
creasingly modeled not only by military and civilian health administra-
tors but also by experts from a number of fields, including medicine,
pedagogy, and psychiatry, who were situated at Japan's leading institu-
tions of higher education. It was these experts who eventually triggered
a massive debate about sexual desire in children, the subject of the next
chapter.
CHAPTER 2
Debating Sex Education

In Germany sexual issues are treated not only from the per-
spective of morality, as in Japan, but also in a scientific way.
As a result there is hardly anyone in Germany over twenty
who still masturbates. An overwhelming number of books
about masturbation and works about other problems related
to sexual desire are published there.
Habuto Eiji, Doitsu shonen no imawashii seiyoku
Habuto Eiji was a gynecologist and a tremendously prolific writer of

popular books on sexual issues during the I920S and 1930S. In 1913,
he had just returned to Japan after two years of studying medicine in
Germany when the newspaper Tokyo Nichinichi Shinbun printed a
short article on his experiences and impressions of German sex educa-
tion and research entitled "The Detestable Sexual Desire of German
Youth" ("Doitsu shanen no imawashii seiyoku," 12 November 1913).1
The newsworthiness of Habuto's statement reflected a heightened inter-
est in "scientific" sex education, which had been discussed controver-
sially by pedagogues, medical doctors, writers, and bureaucrats of the
public health administration for more than a decade.
SOME ESSAYS ON INFANTILE SEXUALITY
Within and outside of the school hygiene system that had emerged dur-
ing the last decades of the nineteenth century, pedagogues and medical
doctors were the first scholars to occupy themselves in their professional
journals with questions of children's sexual desire. In November 1898,
in the same year that the Division of School Hygiene was established, ed-
ucational psychologists Takashima Heisaburo (Takashima Beiho), Ma-
tsumoto K6jira, and Tsukahara Keiji founded the journal Pediatric Re-
search (Jido Kenkyft). Pediatric Research was one of the first pediatric
55
journals to provide a forum, mainly for medical doctors and pedagogues,

for discussing children's development in a comprehensive manner (Taka-
shima 1898-1899). Half a year later, contributors to the journal began
to discuss sexual desire in children, a subject that soon became the fo-
cus of a much broader debate that would continue for many years to
follow.
In the May 1899 issue, Pediatric Research printed an article on the
causes of "Psychological Illnesses among Children" ("Jido ni okeru sei-
shinbyo") in which masturbation (shuin) was noted as one factor leading
to the occurrence of these illnesses (Matsubara 1993:232). Soon other
pediatricians articulated similar views in the Journal of Pediatrics (Jika
Zasshi) in contributions such as "Dangers during the Growth Phase" in
the May 1900 issue or "The Malady of Venereal Diseases" in the Feb-
ruary 1901 issue. In 1900, medical doctor and distinguished historian
of medicine Fujikawa Yu (1865-194) submitted an article to Pediatric
Research entitled "The Sexual Instinct in Children" ("Jido ni okeru sei-
yoku"}.2 In it, Fujikawa provided information about the medical aspects
of sexual desire (shikijo or seiyoku) in children and suggested that chil-
dren masturbated because they were not properly educated about sex-
ual matters by their parents or by their teachers (Fujikawa Y. 1900).
In this article and later, in other scholarly journals and general-read-
ership newspapers and mass-circulation magazines, Fujikawa argued
that the Japanese population had to be given "scientific" information on
children's sex drive. He considered it his mission to provide that infor-
mation (see, e.g., Fujikawa Y. 1907a-b, 1908a, 19 12, 1915, 1919a-d,
1923, 1924, 1928). When he launched his own journal entitled Hu-
mankind: Der Mensch (Jinsei-Der Mensch) in 1905 (see figure 6), Fuji-
kawa wrote an editorial describing his goals, which can be summarized
as follows. First, Humankind: Der Mensch would set out to provide so-
lutions for the social and psychological problems of mankind. Second,
it would lay the cornerstone for collaborative research about these prob-
lems between East and West. And third, it would contribute to research
on the history of humankind. Fujikawa envisaged a readership of a great
variety of professionals, among whom, he hoped, would be lawyers,
bureaucrats, pedagogues, theologians, physicians, anthropologists, and
other scientists who shared his concerns "about the great problems of
humankind" (Fujikawa Y. 1905: I).
Mishima Tsiiryo, founder and first director of the Division of School
Hygiene in the Ministry of Education, was one of these intellectuals. On
20 March 1906, the Journal of Pediatrics printed a lecture that Mishima
Figure 6. The first issue of the journal Humankind: Der
Mensch (Jinsei-Der Mensch, 1905) vividly illustrated the
complexity of the concept of appropriation from Western
science: above the Japanese name is the German subtitle Der
Mensch. Below that, the earth can be seen in front of the ris-
ing sun, flanked by the sun god Apollo (right) and the German
war god Baldur (left). Used with the kind permission of the
Meiji Shinbun Zasshi Bunko, University of Tokyo.
had given at the first International World Conference on School Hygiene

in Nuremberg in 1905, which was, coincidentally, the year August For-
el's influential book The Sexual Question (Die sexuelle Frage) was pub-
lished in Munich. Perhaps the most powerful pediatrician of his time,
Mishima clearly agreed with Fujikawa on the necessity of sex education.
In his article "Sexual Questions of School Children" (" Gakko seito no
shikij6 mondai"), Mishima proclaimed that indeed the German notion
of "sexual pedagogy" (Sexualpadagogik) was the most effective prophy-
lactic measure for preventing both masturbation and venereal diseases.
Mishima's article provoked a great deal of discussion among school di-
rectors and teachers. He urged them to enlighten children on the "dan-
gers of venereal diseases and their evil consequences" in relation to sex-
ual desire and encouraged teachers to consider sex education at least for
middle schools, girls' schools, and high schools (Mishima 1906).
A few regional projects were set up in which teachers made initial at-
tempts to introduce sex education at schools (Furukawa M. 1994: 1 I7).
Some invited medical doctors like Fujikawa to their schools to talk
about hygiene and the functions of the sex organs (seishokki) as well as
the potential risks of their use. However, it wasn't until 1908 that the
quest for sex education spilled over the boundaries of scholarly journals
and local sex education projects to become a public issue that was de-
bated on a national scale.
THE "SEXUAL PROBLEM"
By the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, debates about sex-
ual issues had begun to reach the entire reading public of Japan. From
1 September to 13 October 1908, the Yomiuri Shinbun, a nationally dis-
tributed newspaper, serialized the views of prominent pedagogues and
medical doctors on what they termed the "sexual problem" (alterna-
tively referred to as seiyoku mondai or seimondai). Founded in 1874, the
Yomiuri Shinbun is one of the oldest modern daily papers in Japan. With
a circulation of 60,000, it was also the third-largest newspaper after the
Asahi Shinbun and the Mainichi Shinbun. However, it was the first to
print the phonetic syllable writing systems hiragana and katakana next
to less common Chinese characters in order to facilitate legibility for a
less educated readership. This printing technique corresponded with the
maxim of the press, which was that important information should be
printed in a form understandable to all (Minami H. 1965:334; Muzik
199 6 : 8 3- 8 4).
Debating Sex Education 59
The Yomiuri Shinbun debate on the "sexual problem" both repre-

sented and contributed to an increasing interest in children's sexual de-
sire and its proper guidance by continuously broadening the new arena
of discourse on sex. It heightened the sense of urgency regarding sex ed-
ucation among scholars, bureaucrats of the health administration, teach-
ers, and parents. It was particularly significant because it presented the
sexual problem to a huge, heterogeneous readership that was not neces-
sarily scientifically literate. The debate in the Yomiuri Shinbun also in-
troduced an entire repertoire of new ideas. Among these were opinions
on masturbation and venereal disease, "normalcy" and "deviance," the
responsibilities of teachers and parents, the authority of experts, and the
internationalism of sexual knowledge. It helped generate a discursive
configuration that came to inform talk and texts about sex throughout
the first half of the twentieth century.
Almost all of the contributions were rooted in the conviction that the
creation of and instruction on "correct" knowledge about sex was nec-
essary in order to improve the Japanese national body. According to the
participants in the debate, the idea of protecting or improving the na-
tional health or national hygiene legitimated a tight network of exami-
nation, control, and surveillance through schools, parents, and children
themselves. "Correct" knowledge about sex was to be obtained through
"scientific" methods. These methods included the solicitation of confes-
sions from children, observation and interrogation by parents and teach-
ers, diagnoses of school physicians, and empirical data on the sexual be-
havior of Japan's young. "Scientific" knowledge about sex had to be
completely severed from religious customs and social traditions.
The frequently recurring metaphors of (necessary) disclosure versus
(previous) suppression highlighted the larger purpose of sex education,
namely protection, prevention, and regulation, and have accompanied
the discourse of sex ever since. As I shall show in the following chapters,
however, the labels "liberation" and "suppression" were reconfigured
frequently and promoted or condemned by players with radically vary-
ing agendas. I shall turn to the postwar rhetoric of "sexual freedom" in
chapter 5. Here I am interested in the emergence of the preoccupation
with infantile sexuality and the sex education of children and youth. On
the one hand, children were to be protected from both their own (un-
conscious) desires and the corrupting dangers of modern society-since
a "fallen society" threatened to destroy the education of children, even
those from the best homes. On the other hand, the national body had to
be protected from those children who could not be prevented from in-
60 Debating Sex Education
dulging their desires and who thus became mentally and physically dis-
eased. Hence, instruction on sex that would eventually emerge from
"scientific" knowledge was to be prophylactic and preventive in nature.
It should aim at preventing dubious sexual practices (e.g., masturbation
or intercourse with prostitutes) and their supposed consequences (e.g.,
neurasthenia, venereal diseases, and unwanted pregnancies).
Initially, the debate was framed as an exchange of opinions on sex ed-
ucation (seiyoku kyoiku or seikyoiku mandai), but it carne to be pursued
in a far more complex manner. The contributors raised a great number
of questions. What exactly did "sex education" mean, what should be
said, and why should sex education be carried out? Who was authorized
to speak and who was to remain silent? What was the right age for chil-
dren to be enlightened on sexual matters? The sheer range of these ques-
tions indicated that the new interest in the implications of children's sex-
ual desire had consequences beyond the boundaries of certain scholarly
disciplines. The debate demarcated the "intellectual field" (Bourdieu
1980), which the sexual problem carne to colonize for itself and which
engendered a dense web of tensions over individual and state responsi-
bilities, self-control and happiness, disease and the concern for the na-
tional body. It was also interwoven with negotiations about the author-
ity of experts who strove to distinguish themselves from lay people by
insisting on the necessity of "scientific" knowledge.
DEFINING THE CHILD
For the contributors to the series in the Yomiuri Shinbun, sex education
was based on two techniques of inquiry: encouraging children to speak,
and making children investigate themselves and their own behavior.
Yoshida Kumaji (1874-1964) argued that the term "children" had to
be carefully and clearly defined, since education about sexual desire
might harm children of certain age groups (Yoshida K. 1908a:5). Ironi-
cally, however, he suggested including everybody from infants (akago)
to adults (otona) in the definition of "children" (shitei) because sex ed-
ucation was important for everyone. 3
The question of the age range of childhood was not taken for granted;
pedagogues had attempted to define the child in terms of age prior to the
debate in the Yomiuri Shinbun. Imai Tsuneo, for example, published a
monumental work, Family and Education (Katei oyobi kyoiku), two
years before the debate appeared in the Yomiuri Shinbun. This work ex-
plained that the "infant phase" (nyojiki) referred to infants up to the age
of eight months, "childhood" (jidoki) covered children up to the age of

seven, and "late childhood" (jido koki) referred to children between the
ages of seven and fourteen or fifteen and was followed by adolescence
and adulthood (Imai T. 1906: 176 -177). The authors of the series in
the Yomiuri Shinbun were not as explicit regarding the age of children
they discussed, and they vacillated among the four phases that Imai had
outlined. Thus the categories "children" and "adolescents" appeared in
equal proportions in the debate, and sex education was situated in the
home as well as in elementary, middle, and high schools. However, re-
gardless of the age at which participants suggested children receive sex
education, most agreed that ignorance and error had to be combated
and sex had to be liberated from mystification.
PREVENTING HARM
A few authors steadfastly opposed sex education of any kind and re-
treated to the notion of the nature of the Japanese as essentially different
from that of people from the West, where sex education was perceived
as necessary and legitimate (Yoshida K. I908b:5). This difference in
nature stemmed from a number of things, including the Japanese diet,
which lacked meat and alcohol, and-as noted in the first chapter-an
awareness of a relative physical weakness that had been commented on
in military hygiene reports and in the physical examination reports of
school physicians. Yoshida, for example, reasoned that people in the
West ate a lot of meat and frequently drank beer and wine for lunch and
dinner. Both of these customs, he claimed, typically increased sexual de-
sire. Little wonder, then, that the negative effects of increased sexual de-
sire were much more common among Western youth, and thus sex ed-
ucation there was justified, while in Japan its necessity was far from
proven (Yoshida K. I908c:5; see also Katayama 1911). Yoshida warned
that Japanese translations of German books that maintained that more
than half of German elementary school pupils masturbated did not suf-
ficiently legitimate the introduction of sex education in Japanese schools
(Yoshida K. 1908b:5). He also demanded that nothing should be done
at all in terms of sex education before detailed empirical studies were
carried out at Japanese schools to prove its necessity.
I shall analyze the first sex surveys, conducted at the beginning of the
1920S, in chapter 3. Here I wish to emphasize that unlike Yoshida, most
of the participants in the debate were convinced that sex education was
as necessary in Japan as in any other modern nation. The actual content
of sex education, however, was controversial. While some insisted that

it was vital to convey accurate knowledge about sex, others cautioned
that the amount of knowledge was crucial. As evident from the Yomiuri
Shinbun debate, sex education covered a wide variety of topics, ranging
from exercise and training in willpower and self-control to explicit ex-
planations about sexual awakening, the development of the sexual or-
gans, and related aspects of the transition to adolescence and adulthood.
Families and elementary schools were responsible for laying the ground-
work for sound ethics and morals, declared Muko Gunji, professor at
the prestigious Keio University, but it was also the duty of the state to
raise a "morally strong people." Sex education for children was thus one
of the most crucial tools for nurturing "national moral health." The
warrior ethics of premodern Japan (bushi no dotoku) should now be en-
forced by a "social system of punishment" (shakaiteki seisai) consisting
of the family, schools, and other institutions (Muko 1908b:5).
Most pedagogues who contributed to the debate in the Yomiuri Shin-
bun agreed that sex education was necessary primarily to avoid the "hor-
rible consequences of masturbation" (Muko 1908a:5). Yubara Moto-
ichi, head of the Tokyo School of Music (Tokyo Ongaku Gakko),
suggested discussing sexual desire in a way that would "not embarrass"
young boys and girls. Masturbation, he argued, should be mentioned
rarely, only if absolutely necessary, and only after consulting a doctor
(Yubara 1908: 5). For the founder and director of Japan's first Medical
School for Women (Tokyo Joi Gakko), Washiyama Yayoi (later Yoshi-
oka Yayoi), masturbation was "the most terrible ailment related to the
sexual instinct." Regarding sex education, she asserted that the only
purpose of the sex drive was reproduction and any abuse would have
fatal consequences. Washiyama, the only female participant in the de-
bate, reasoned that ignorance led students between the ages of fifteen
and seventeen to masturbate. Since masturbation did not lead to sat-
isfaction, they masturbated frequently and had to bear unimaginable
consequences (Washiyama 1908a:5). Muko, along with most of the ped-
agogues who participated in the debate, wholeheartedly shared Washi-
yama's conviction that sex education served mainly to avoid the "dev-
astating consequences of masturbation" (Muko 1908a-c).
However, pedagogues and medical doctors agreed that attempts at
avoiding masturbation in order to escape its harmful effects were a tricky
matter. Since sexual desire would awaken eventually no matter what was
done about it, the essential decision to be made was not if sex education
should take place but how youth, who possibly masturbated, could be
told that they must not masturbate, without provoking those who did
not to try it. Muko and other participants in the debate did not question
the sexual drive in children but rather strove for an appropriate means
of controlling youth and protecting them from "everything bad," be
it masturbation, "impure women," or venereal diseases. According to
Muko, sexual desire should serve the purpose of reproduction alone,
and any other use should be considered a "sex crime" (Muko 1908e:5).
Other authors vigorously advocated a more comprehensive sex edu-
cation that would teach children everything about the dangers of sexual
desire. They thought that children should no longer be told that they
"descended from trees" (Inagaki 1908: s). Instead, sexual knowledge
should be "popularized" (tsuzoku-ka suru) in order to avert the danger
to the nation's health and welfare represented by masturbation and vene-
real diseases. Ignorance of sexual matters was seen by proponents of sex
education as directly linked to "neurasthenia" (shinkei suijaku) or-
more precisely-"sexual neurasthenia" (seiteki shinkei suijaku), which
was repeatedly diagnosed by physicians of middle schools, and ascribed
to "sexual immorality" (seiteki fudotoku) both within and outside of
the Yomiuri Shinbun debate (Muko 1908a:S).
Shimoda Jiro, a colleague of Yoshida's at the teachers' college, subse-
quently presented a competing view of the causes of neurasthenia. He
suggested that students who suffered from too much learning and too
many exams would develop neurasthenia and other neurological dis-
eases. After graduation they would not be able to live "normal" lives,
and some might even die. Many preparations were necessary for life
in a modern society like Japan and thus, Shimoda argued, the number of
subjects in schools had increased. "Human strength" (ningen no chi-
kara), however, he emphasized, has always been and still was limited.
He concluded that if the brain were overused from an early age, neither
the body nor the mind would fully develop (Shimoda I904a:406-4o7).
Most contemporary pedagogues, including those who participated in
the Yomiuri Shinbun debate, disagreed with Shimoda on the issue of
neurasthenia. In contrast to his position, they generally agreed that there
was a direct connection between masturbation and neurasthenia. No
matter whether they propagated or opposed sex education in schools,
they were convinced that excessive autoerotic practices, rather than too
much school work, led to paleness, loss of appetite, forgetfulness, indif-
ference, melancholy, and poor scholastic results, predominantly among
male youth (Muko I908b:S; Minami R. 1908a, c; Washiyama I908b:S).
Anxieties about neurasthenia, just like concerns about prostitution
and venereal diseases, were shared by specialists in schools as well as

in military academies and hospitals. Preoccupied with neurasthenia's
causes and consequences, health administrators in the military and the
national government's public health administration began to view neur-
asthenia as a precursor to more serious illnesses that could occur epi-
demically and eventually challenge military discipline and combat capa-
bilities, or even the nation's social order and stability. Medical experts
employed by militaries throughout the world insisted on the enormous
role that psychic predisposition played in the onset of all war-related dis-
orders (Rabinbach 1990: 267). Accordingly, the Imperial Army and
Navy's medical staff began to record nervous diseases (shinkei-kei byo)
among soldiers and officers as early as in 1878, when some physicians
began to make connections between a venereal disease infection, conse-
quent suffering from nervous maladies, and eventual attempts at suicide
(Rikugunsho 1879; Kaigunsho 1897:170). By the end of World War I,
categories for nervous illnesses listed in the military'S annual health re-
ports had been expanded from one to eleven different kinds. These nerv-
ous illnesses were recorded in the army and the navy stationed through-
out the Japanese empire and included "neurasthenia" and "hysteria" as
separate categories (e.g., Rikugunsho 19 1 7: 140, 15 1 , 364, 4 0 3, 432,
466, 492). Medical doctor Hirota Motokichi was especially concerned
with neurasthenia when it occurred among military men: "It is espe-
cially important to ensure that military leaders do not suffer from neur-
asthenia. They have to keep their nerve until the very end of a war, for
example, and suffering from neurasthenia would be dangerous in the
case of military leaders who operate under a lot of pressure .... With-
out a strong physique and mind, nothing new and good can occur" (Hi-
rota 19 19: 1 34, 138).
However, in civilian society too, associations between sexual prac-
tices, mental and physical ailments, and challenges to the social order of
the nation had become commonplace. Okuma Shigenobu (1838-1922),
an immensely influential figure in politics and education, addressed this
concern in a powerful speech to the participants of a conference on men-
tal illnesses in 1922. Okuma promoted a law that would regulate the
lives of the mentally ill. His appeal clearly was dominated by the idea of
social order and the potential challenge posed to that order by the
"chronically ill":
Insanity occasionally becomes infectious. This infection can be terrible,
spreading ceaselessly among the people. A society, or even a state, can even-
tually become morbid. I suppose that a nation like Russia might be affected
by insanity. In the beginning, it was neurasthenia, then it became psychosis,
and finally it turned into a pathological attack which would lead the nation
to end in a complete failure-a revolution. Being insane produces a pecu-
liar effect. Because, once affected by insanity, even the Japanese, who have
been known for a unique loyalty to their Emperor, may exhibit a disloy-
alty.... Insane persons should be taken care of by the state. Why? If they
are neglected, the infection willrnake the nation increasingly morbid, and
the entire society will become confused and out of control. (Quoted in
Nakatani 1995: 15)
Okuma defined the attributes of insanity as infection, moral degra-

dation, and threat to social and national integrity. He argued that deca-
dent public morals-indulgence in alcohol, art, and literature-pre-
vailed among Japan's youth, causing neurasthenia. In Okuma's eyes, the
contagiousness of immorality was associated with the infectiousness of
mental disorders, both of which were equally devastating because they
threatened people's morality and caused social turmoil.
Medical doctors, bureaucrats who dealt with public health policies,
and pedagogues alike perceived neurasthenia as a pathological phenom-
enon caused by an excessive and misled sex life, of which masturbation
and prostitution were but the most obvious manifestations, manifesta-
tions that could result in venereal diseases as well as tuberculosis. These
connections were fueled by the belief that tuberculosis was not a disease
in its own right but was a form of syphilis (Johnston 199 5 : 4 8, 190, 197,
289 ).4 Moreover, it was also commonly believed that the development
of insanity followed a pathological evolution that was disastrous for
the individual and society-similar to that of venereal and other infec-
tious diseases. Extensive autoerotic practices, \vhich were commonly
stimulated by alcohol and "bad literature," would lead to neurasthenia.
Neurasthenia, as a preliminary stage of psychosis, would bring about
pathological consequences and eventually culminate in moral degrada-
tion and social chaos. Hence, masturbation was but one expression of
insanity.
Participants in the Yomiuri Shinbun debate were equally concerned
about the spread of venereal diseases and the threat they posed to na-
tional health. Here too, health interests intermingled with moral claims.
For Fujikawa, for example, people who were convinced that sex educa-
tion increased sexual desire were ignorant about education. He argued
that a "morally oriented education" that treated the "sexual problem"
ambivalently actually prevented a solution to a problem that had to be
"attacked swiftly" (Fujikawa Y. 1908a:5). Yubara also was convinced

that ignorance posed an even greater danger than any sex education pos-
sibly could, regardless of whether the latter was carried out at school or
at home (Yubara 1908:5).
"Immoral behavior," or individual morality for that matter, was a
rather complex construct as reflected in the Yomiuri Shinbun debate and
the more comprehensive pedagogical works of the time. Imai Tsuneo
explained that individual morality was in fact threefold. There were
the "morals of the body," including all practices that involved one's
physique, "external morals," which concerned all things outside of one-
self, and "morals of the mind" (Imai 1906: 822). While "external mor-
als," or the risks and challenges of modern society, were considered out-
side the grasp of an individual, the training and hygiene of the mind
separate from and in addition to that of the body was frequently empha-
sized. Shimoda liro, for example, considered "mental hygiene" (seishin
no eisei) no less important than physical cleanliness. "Mental hygiene"
was crucial in the education of both boys and girls because mental weak-
ness would eventually harm and weaken the body. Referring to Herbert
Spencer's work Education (1880), Wilhelm Lowenthal's Outline of Hy-
giene in Education (Grundzuge einer Hygiene des Unterrichts, 1887),
and the works of several other German, French, and British pedagogues
and philosophers, Shimoda emphasized the importance of the balance
between body and mind. He argued that an overdose of knowledge, if
accompanied by a lack of physical exercise, could provoke rather un-
welcome results in a child (Shimoda 1904a:405). Minami Ry6, director
of the First High School (Daiichi Kot6 Gakko, which was later inte-
grated in the pedagogical faculty of the University of Tokyo), expressed
similar concerns when he suggested that mothers instruct their sons by
employing the following words:
We become fathers and mothers through body and soul. That means that
both body and soul are important. If parents' bodies are bad or their souls
rotten, the body of the child will be bad and its soul rotten too. The man's
seed is very important. Since his seed turns into a shoot from which a new
person arises, you must take care day and night to keep your body and soul
healthy and pure so that on the day you become a father you will not regret
anything. Keep pure that part of your body which is the source of children
and grandchildren .... Happiness depends on whether one has adequate
self-control. No matter how much obscenity you see or hear, keep your dis-
tance from it. You must carefully concentrate on preserving your purity.
(Minami R. 1908b:5)
Concern about the physical and mental consequences of venereal dis-

eases and the conviction that female prostitutes (male prostitutes never
appeared in this debate) were their source led Shimoda to explain that
sex education must serve to keep youth from the dangers of contact with
"impure women" (fuketsu na anna), who he suspected not only popu-
lated the traditional red-light districts but also waitressed in the new
beer halls (Shimoda 1908c:5). As appropriate reading matter he recom-
mended a book that underlined the importance of sex education by
describing the horrific consequences of an infection with a venereal dis-
ease. 5 Although some people would attempt to end their lives by throw-
ing themselves into the Kegon Waterfalls (a popular site for suicides), at
least society, he argued, would remain undamaged. Referring to the con-
tent of the book, Shimoda explained that in many cases infection with a
venereal disease resulted in blindness, sterility, mental retardation, and
physical deformities in the offspring of the infected person (Shimoda
1908c:5). Yoshida assented, emphasizing that infection with a venereal
disease meant nothing less than undermining the very basis of the state
by damaging the entire national body (Yoshida K. 1908a:5).
GENDERED TROUBLE
It was not always made clear in the sex education debate whether the fo-
cus was on boys, girls, or both. Although some considered coeducation
(danja kango kyoiku) an important prerequisite for boys' and girls' get-
ting used to the other sex and "meet[ing] them in harmony," cautious
pedagogues like Muko warned that physical proximity might have the
disadvantage of enabling children to touch one another. However, he
felt that if some subjects were taught separately, coeducation in others
would not have negative effects on children (Muko 1908d:5). Inagaki
Suematsu, a colleague of Muko's at Keio University, steadfastly defended
the existing model of coeducation in elementary schools, if only because
coeducation in these schools was sanctioned by the Ministry of Educa-
tion and also" favored in the Protestant countries of the Western world."
He was more wary of the possible negative effects on the development
of pubescent students at middle school age. However, Ingaki noted, be-
cause coeducation had become the well-established ideal in "civilized"
societies, Japan had to become accustomed to it as well. Once coeduca-
tion at the middle school level became common in Japan, it would not
cause great damage. Inagaki also appealed to readers of the Yomiuri

Shinbun, arguing that instead of confronting the "sexual problem" with
resistance and mistrust, they should give it sufficient attention and allow
it to be "liberated from mystification" (Inagaki 1908 : 5).
Shimoda agreed that children needed to know about the "most im-
portant issue in human life," but rejected coeducation at the middle
school and high school levels because pubescent boys and girls were at
a very "sensitive age." He also questioned whether the Japanese in gen-
eral and Japanese children and youth in particular were ready to take
on the sexual issue (Shimoda 1908a:5, 1908b:5). Sexual desire might be
natural, he argued, but modern human beings had to overcome nature
to a certain degree. Sex education should not be forced on students, Shi-
moda cautioned, as some of them might be mentally unprepared for it.
Also, sex education could provoke and irritate students who had not yet
developed adequate self-control (Shimoda 1908b:5).
Most participants in the debate had no doubts about masturbation
and "same-sex love" (doseiai) being common among boys in schools,
factory dormitories, juvenile reformatories, and prisons (see Osugi 1992
[1930]; Roden 1980; Pflugfelder 1999:283). However, directors and
teachers of girls' schools, who represented the majority of participants
in the Yomiuri Shinbun debate, "knew" that masturbation was also ram-
pant among girls. Psychologists and gynecologists might justly criticize
the fact that girls were left to grow up in "sexual ignorance," one of
them reasoned, but if girls would only refrain from reading "obscene
novels" and if they were not harassed by men, they would know noth-
ing about sex and everything would follow its natural course (Shimoda
1908b:5). Pedagogues were preoccupied with the age of sexual maturity
for girls, which was perceived as closely related to their reaching full
body height. They suggested that one had to be particularly cautious
with girls around the age "when their development is faster than that of
boys." Studies based on the school hygiene examinations had found that
the majority of Japanese girls reached sexual maturity, defined as their
first menstruation and the growth of their breasts, by the age of thirteen,
while boys reached sexual maturity by the age of fourteen. At this age,
proper care and maintenance of the body (shintai no yogo) was consid-
ered crucial, precisely because "sexual desire [occurred] before girls and
boys were able to develop a strong will and make proper judgments"
(Imai T. 1906: 824). Minami phrased an ideal lecture on sex education
by a mother to her daughter as follows:
You have come so far that you can produce the sprig from which a human
arises in your body. This is also visible externally. Do not be surprised by it.
It does not mean anything. You are completely healthy. You will bleed for
two or three days and during these days you will feel your body intensely.
That will happen once every four weeks and is only the proof that you have
grown up. However, it is important that you do not overwork, and that
you wash yourself carefully and take better care of yourself during these
days. This is not simply an experience but the preparation for you to be-
come a mother one day. Therefore you must take proper care of yourself.
You might worry about when it will happen and it is indeed an important
time but please be pleased with yourself that one day you will be a mother.
(Minami R. I908c:S)
The preoccupation with girls' future as mothers of (it was hoped)

numerous healthy children was responsible to a large extent for a great
number of articles written in pedagogical journals and other magazines
after the turn of the century. These articles dealt exclusively with girls'
education, hygiene, sex education, and physical training. Emphasizing
the supposed "special characteristics" of the female mind and physique,
these authors insisted that girls' and women's sexual desire was insepa-
rably pervaded and guided by their desire to have children. They also
declared women's sexual desire to be weaker than men's, or they dis-
counted it altogether (Shimoda 1904a, 1904b; Nagai 1916; Narita
1995).6 In any case, however, most pedagogues thought that as a pre-
cautionary measure, girls also should be educated on sexual matters
(Washiyama 1908b:5). Pedagogues and medical doctors found it quite
disturbing to detect signs of exhaustion in girls, which they assumed
stemmed from autoerotic practices. When occurring in girls, neurasthe-
nia seemed even more worrisome than in boys. Shimoda Jiro and other
pedagogues believed that neurasthenia increasingly occurred in girls as
an effect of schooling, to which they had only recently been subjected.
According to Shimoda's logic, higher education affected girls much more
severely because they had been denied an adequate education for such a
long time. Now girls could study, but as a result their menstruation be-
came irregular, their faces pale, and their bodies and souls weak. Since
he feared that neurasthenic girls eventually would give birth to neuras-
thenic infants, Shimada urged the authorities to reform school curricula
so that more time could be invested in both the "hygiene of the body"
and the "hygiene of the mind" (Shimoda 1904a:412-4 I 3; see also Ada-
chi 1930).
Masturbation was often collapsed with homosexuality. Although les-
bian encounters at girls' schools were thought to be quite common, some

authors suggested that masturbation and/or homosexuality among girls
was not as "animal-like" as that among boys (Kuwatani 191 I; Fujo
Shinbun I911, 1912; Furuya 1922; Hentai Seiyoku 1924a-b; see also
Robertson 1998,1999). Among others, Yamamoto Senji (1889-1929),
Japan's first sex researcher, whose achievements I shall discuss in chap-
ter 3, pursued this vie\v and claimed that "purely platonic" relationships
among girls were erroneously being judged as sexual because the pre-
dominantly male staff at girls' schools were unfamiliar with the female
psyche. Hence, male teachers regarded "homosexual love among girls"
(shojokan no dosei renai) as a pedagogical problem. Yamamoto casti-
gated them for equating "platonic love" (puratonikku rabu) among
girls, who "simply hugged each other without any carnal trick and who
remained yearning," with the "psychotic group forms of masturbation
and sodomy common in boys' dormitories" (Yamamoto Senji 1924b:
39-42).7 He criticized schoolmasters for scandalizing the "completely
harmless" behavior of girls, and for battling it unnecessarily with dra-
conian measures. As a result of unjustified punishment, girls would only
develop a strong sense of shame, which itself could have disastrous ef-
fects on their lives. Yamamoto urged schoolmasters to implement sex
education at their schools not only for students but also for male and fe-
male teachers, in order to enhance their poor knowledge of the female
psyche and physique (Yamamoto Senji 1924b:39-42).
In contrast to the weak, harmless, or even absent sexual desire attrib-
uted to girls, the authors of the series in the Yomiuri Shinbun and other
commentators consistently presented sexual desire in boys as aggressive,
destructive, and, above all, potentially uncontrollable, reiterating earlier
assumptions about male sexual desire that I discussed in chapter I.
Hence Minami, for example, suggested that boys had to be warned and,
if necessary, intimidated in order to sufficiently emphasize the impor-
tance of self-control. According to Minami, sexual desire should be de-
scribed to boys as an "animalistic power" that held them imprisoned. It
"vas to be likened to the power that made people steal someone else's
food and drink when they were hungry and thirsty. Besides drawing
comparisons with other basic needs, teachers should point out to their
male students that the "reproductive drive" was more important than
eating and drinking. Just as for horses and dogs, the "seed [wants to be]
inserted into the female body," but, unlike animals, humans had to be
wary of all kinds of temptations related to physical desires. Minami
urged teachers to point out to their male students that "happiness
[would] entirely disappear from their lives" should they "succumb to

temptation" (Minami R. 1908d:5).
If a boy or man were led astray by temptation, Minami warned, sex-
ual desire would take over, as its only purpose lay in the transmission of
fluid. Hinting at the consequences of venereal diseases, Minami encour-
aged teachers to emphasize that the sex drive was concerned with nei-
ther the health of parents nor the health of an unborn child. Again and
again, teachers should plant the thought in their students' heads that the
"eruption of sexual desire" was "as strong as a storm." In a storm, a
boat might tip over. Likewise, if young men did not control their sexual
desire, they would "sink like a boat in a storm" (Minami R. 1908d:5).
Cautious pedagogues also warned that not all teachers were fit to give
such a tough lesson to their students. Only mature teachers who pos-
sessed adequate teaching experience, had a solid sense of morals, were
themselves entirely "free of sexual desires," and were able to speak "sci-
entifically" about the sex drive were declared adequate (Muko I 908e: 5;
Washiyama 1908b:5; Shimada 1908b:5). Yubara referred to "Western
works" on the research of masturbation and suggested that teachers
should speak about sexual desire in a way that did not provoke a sense
of shame in youth. He also suggested that girls and boys not only be
educated separately but also by a person of their own sex-i.e., girls
by mothers or female teachers and boys by fathers or male teachers (Yu-
bara 1908).
CLASS DISTINCTIONS
When talking about youth in general or pupils at girls' schools in par-

ticular, participants in the Yomiuri Shinbun debate were implicitly re-
ferring to children from middle- and upper-class homes, many of whom
attended institutions of secondary education. By the time of the Yomiuri
Shinbun debate, more than 98 percent of elementary school-age chil-
dren attended elementary school and more than 300,000 male and fe-
male students received SaIne kind of secondary education (see Marshall
1992:81,219). In the minds of members of the upper and emerging
middle classes, the educated upper class was considered morally supe-
rior, and Muko-among other intellectuals-appealed to its members
not to shy away from what he considered to be their responsibility. He
urged them to take their responsibility seriously and build a social sys-
tem of punishment for" crimes against national health," so that sex ed-
ucation for children would eventually become unnecessary. Until then
only the upper class, privileged by education, could prevent children

from doing harm to their bodies and souls (Muko 1908c:5).
Participants in the debate spoke confidently about male and female
children and adolescents who attended their schools. The sexual nature
of relationships among the working class and particularly among young
female factory workers, however, seemed far less clear to them. Many
middle- and upper-class educators, physicians, and social reformers
suspected female factory workers to be promiscuous and "undutiful."
Physicians who examined female factory workers believed that many of
them masturbated regularly. In light of the lack of education among
workers in general, they assumed that there were more women in facto-
ries than among the upper and middle classes who were prone to sexual
indecencies. They frequently underlined their assumption by pointing
out that "industrious working-class people's sexual desire was stimu-
lated by living in small, crowded housing" (Yoshida S. 19 2 5; Ieda I939).
In 1925, Hosoi Wakizo, the author of The Sad History of Factory
Women (Joko aishi)-, reported on women who had secretly taken short
pieces of pipe home from the factories and inserted them into their vagi-
nas. Others used potatoes for the same purpose and eventually had to
see a doctor because the potatoes could no longer be removed. Tall girls
pressed their bodies against the machines, thus sexually arousing them-
selves while working (Hosoi 1996 [I925]:3I7). Pointing out that only
the better-equipped factory dormitories provided a futon for each girl,
and that in most cases two girls shared a futon, Hosoi also suggested
that the cramped conditions might have furthered their activities. In
the morning, Hosoi reported, one could find at least 30 percent of the
girls in "strange positions," another 30 percent had unintentionally em-
braced each other during sleep, and 40 percent had intentionally done
so. Hosoi concluded, "The phenomenon of lesbianism is quite common
and includes a wide range of practices ranging from mutual psycholog-
ical love to extremely lustful activities, which are accompanied by a
strong sense of jealousy" (Hosoi I996 [I925]:3I6-17).
Hosoi Wakizo had been working in a factory since the age of thirteen
and remained a worker and socialist activist at a cotton spinning factory
until his death at the age of twenty-nine. In his book he wrote that fe-
male workers and a factory physician with whom he was acquainted
had told him these stories. Hosoi emphasized the difficulties in studying
the psychology of factory women. He noted that he had eventually suc-
ceeded because he had lived with them from dawn to dusk, observed
their daily life, collected their songs, studied their psychology from a
medical perspective, and tried to clarify the relationship between their

psychology and their physiology (Hosoi 1996 [1925]:317).8
From the issues aired in the Yomiuri Shinbun~ Hosoi's book, and a
variety of other records, it is clear that most pedagogues and physi-
cians were convinced that sex education in general and at schools in par-
ticular would have a positive effect on sexual morals and behavior (Yo-
shida K. 1916).
FLAWED PARENTS
While an important role was ascribed to schools, parental responsibility

with respect to sex education was another highly contested theme in the
debate. Some contributors to the debate questioned whether parents
were suitable to judge the maturity of their children and therefore to
determine the right time for sex education. Some participants in the de-
bate considered parents the authorities best qualified to observe their
children and elicit their responses. However, they argued, it was im-
perative for sex education to employ even more intrusive techniques of
surveillance. Sex education had to make youths so self-conscious that
they would "carefully observe and investigate" themselves (Washiyama
I908b:5). In order to prevent "immoral behavior," these writers sug-
gested, parents should speak with and interrogate their children. If they
found out that their offspring had in fact "been bad," the more cautious
educators believed that it would only do harm for parents to disclose too
much to their children (Muko I908a:5). Others suggested that parents
lacked the necessary sensitivity to teach their children about sex because
they knew too little themselves or because their own sexual morals were
less than desirable.
Parents were urged to choose the appropriate words carefully so that
their children would "shudder at the idea of contravening their parents'
advice" (Muko I908a:5). Muko, for example, found it inadequate to
teach children that they were different from animals and instead urged
parents and professional educators to highlight the specifics of human
nature. He felt it more appropriate to explain that in the world of all be-
ings, humans were in a "superior position" and that even "lowly ani-
malistic sensual stimulation" was part of the" highly developed" human
being (Muko 1908b:5). If parents "were not ashamed to relish having
sex while sharing a bedroom with their children," he concluded that
they should sleep in separate rooms, because otherwise children might
remember not only "the good" but also "the bad" (Muko 1908a:S).9
Like Muko, Washiyama considered it unlikely that parents were capable

of educating their children on sexual matters, because they typically
knew very little about "physical hygiene." Parents could determine
symptoms if they-as they should-observed their offspring ade-
quately. Headaches, a pale complexion, weak eyes, passivity, melan-
choly, stomach aches, and tuberculosis were all understood as definite
signs of indulgence in masturbation. However, the very important task
of sex education should be taken over by schools as a distinct subject
(Washiyama I908a:5, I908b:S).
The lack of faith in parents' abilities expressed by some of the con-
tributors to the Yomiuri Shinbun debate reflected the importance and
sensitivity ascribed to sex education by professional educators, medical
doctors, and other guardians of the health of the national body. It also
pointed to an older conviction, according to which parents and espe-
cially young mothers should not be given extensive authority over chil-
drearing if older, supposedly more trustworthy, family members were
present. Early modern advice tracts had tended to undermine mothers'
relationships with their children. They held that women's many faults
impeded their ability to properly socialize children. Children would be-
come better adults if reared by more "virtuous" men, such as fathers,
grandfathers, or pedagogues, and men comprised the bulk of peda-
gogues far into the twentieth century (Uno I999: 37-39).
After I890, a new pattern of child care had emerged in city house-
holds that were no longer productive units. Particularly influential were
the family patterns of the new urban middle-class households whose
breadwinners filled the expanding ranks of salaried employees. The up-
per reaches of the new salaried class included influential professionals,
such as the educators who voiced their opinions on sex education in the
Yomiuri Shinbun debate and other forums, bureaucrats, technicians,
managers, and journalists. In their homes, women and children became
dependent consumers as the family shed many of the productive tasks
that women and sometimes children continued to perform in rural and
urban enterprise households.
These broader changes did not have an immediate impact on the lit-
erate classes to which the authors and many of the readers of the Yomi-
uri Shinbun belonged. Thus, when some participants in the debate on
sex education insisted that parents should act as primary caretakers and
provide sex education for their children, they expressed a rather pro-
gressive view of parenting. Only around the advent of the twentieth cen-
tury did the family ideology, which formed the base of the Meiji consti-
tution promulgated in 1889, spread into pedagogical treatises and into
literate middle- and upper-class households. In minimal accordance
with the new state-initiated emphasis on parents as the primary edu-
cators of children, promoters of sex education declared parents to be
crucial primary authorities for closely observing children and making
them talk.
This modern family ideology stylized love and marital fidelity be-
tween husband and wife as the "pinnacle of reason and emotion," and
Meiji intellectuals declared it the "greatest pleasure in human life"
(Kada Ryiiz6, quoted in Deno 1990: 507). Now, the family was to be
a place of mutual love, respect, and care and was viewed as the core
unit of social stability and progress. Pedagogues insisted that the family
was the base and primary training ground for a person's entire moral
education. Given this important role it was the parents' primary duty
to provide and maintain peace and happiness in the family (Imai T.
19 6 :4,14- 1 5).
In reality, these duties, prescribed by the Civil Code and reinforced by
contemporary print media, rested with mothers, who found themselves
pressed to conform to their ascribed gender roles as "good wives" and
"wise mothers." These roles entailed a strict commitment to their fam-
ilies and subordination to their fathers and husbands. Love, be it for
one's spouse or children, did not always corne easy, and often wives
ended up striving to make up for a husband's flaws in order to save the
family. Trapped in a marriage with an adulterous, abusive, or in other
ways less than caring husband, a despairing wife often put on a happy
face and wound up raising her husband's illegitimate children in ad-
dition to her own, or managed without the help of a maid in order to
avoid having her husband harass her (Yamada 1989 [1983]:357). Even
when a husband allegedly had molested his daughter or made his wife's
sister pregnant, a woman was unlikely to find a way to break either the
union or the family bonds (Tsuzoku Igaku 1925: 60-62; Yamada 1989
[19 8 3]:355).
Male pedagogues rarely addressed these problems when they out-
lined the ideal roles of mothers and fathers in the education of children
at horne. In his contributions to the Yomiuri Shinbun debate as well as
in his other works, Shimoda propagated the roles of mothers and fa-
thers. He argued that the mother was the child's best educator because
she took care of the child from birth and thus was "one with the child"
(doshin ittai). Since the child experienced how to feel and act with other
people through the mother, being educated by the mother was, in Shi-
moda's view, very important for the child. Because the mother repre-
sented the inside, and the father the outside of the house, a mother's love
was physiologically and psychologically very different from a father's
love. If one compared the family to a ship, Shimoda wrote, the father
would be the captain and the mother the machinist (Shimoda 1904a:
3 20 -3 22 ).
Muko announced that he was "against telling children as little as pos-
sible about the sexual instinct" and warned that the danger of children
"doing something bad" would prevail if this topic was not discussed
in families (Muko 1908a:5, 1908b:5). Hence, he criticized those par-
ents who avoided responding to children's questions on sexual matters.
Pointing out the "dangers of modern society," he suggested that parents
who did not talk about sexual matters with their children probably
thought that their children were completely innocent, but they had for-
gotten about the impurity of society. If parents failed to provide sex ed-
ucation for their children, children would be unable to develop as
proper moral beings or to acquire knowledge of their physiology and the
pathologies caused by certain sexual practices (Muko 1908b:5).
Despite the reevaluation of parents as primary educators, pedagogues
often doubted their judgment and repeatedly came to the conclusion
that parents were probably the best of all the poor choices available,
which included sensationalist newspapers and magazines, obscene pa-
perbacks, and bad friends. Minami deemed the parents' role relatively
positive, since they were the most capable of knowing when the right
time had come for their children to learn about sex. Because of the dif-
ferent ages at which children mature, Minami favored parents as sex ed-
ucators. Minami was also the only contributor to the debate who made
concrete suggestions for what exactly should be said to girls and boys
who were to be sexually enlightened. Referring to the German physician
and pedagogue Friedrich Wilhelm Forster's concept of willpower, which
was to be developed in a child in order to properly control the sex drive,
Minami suggested that self-control and willpower were more important
than knowledge about sexual desire: "Physical things are not so impor-
tant. One has to imagine the psyche as the basis for morals and person-
ality. To be sure, one must take preventive measures to counter immor-
ality, since today, as much as in the times of the old Greeks, unnatural
forms of satisfaction of the sexual instinct cause major mischief" (Mi-
nami R. 1908b:5).
EXPERT KNOWLEDGE AND WESTERN FRIENDS
The debate in the Yomiuri Shinbun was dominated by pleas for a sex ed-
ucation that would pass on knowledge about sexual desire and its sup-
posedly related risks to individuals and the nation. This knowledge, its
proponents thought, should be passed on to children, youth, parents,
and through parents to all groups in society that could not be reached
by schools and other educational institutions. The participants in the de-
bate appointed themselves as experts on what kind of sex education was
true or false, right or wrong, morally just or objectionable. Even those
who were inconsistent in their stance on the matter generally approved
of sex education by parents or schools or both, if only to avoid having
less competent agents carry it out and end up causing more harm than
would have been caused by no education at all.
The debate followed an explicit demarcation of scholars and other
professionals whose authority was rooted in academia from other agents
of potentially misleading advice. The new naturalist literature, which
Shimoda called "obscene novels," was denounced by a mostly older gen-
eration of literary critics as "pornography" or "unhealthy erotic writ-
ing." Other intellectuals agreed with Shimada. A few months prior
to the Yomiuri Shinbun debate, the mass-circulation magazine The Sun
(Taiya) had dedicated the majority of its New Year's edition to the ques-
tion of whether young men and women should be allowed to read these
novels. One of the contributors thundered that the new literature "full
of adultery" caused great damage in youth, stimulated "low instincts,"
led to individualist, liberal ideas, and propagated a negative world view
(Taiya I January 1908, quoted in J. Rubin 1984: 121-122). Literary
scholar Oguri Fiiyo countered that the naturalist school did not make
sexuality a theme out of pure pleasure, but rather because knowledge
about sex was too important for youth to be ignored (Taiya I October
1908, quoted in J. Rubin 1984: 122). Authors of the naturalist school
attempted to turn against the "old morals and customs" and highlight
the importance of "correct sexual knowledge" for Japan's youth. They
looked with scorn and disdain at the old customs. The new authors saw
themselves as combatants against the nonscientific view of humans and
attempted to "boldly [make] sexuality and desire a part of human real-
ity" (BungeiJihya I January 1908, quoted inJ. Rubin 1984:123).
A few months after the Yomiuri Shinbun debate came to an end,
authorities confiscated the July edition of the literary magazine The
Pleiades (Subaru). They argued that one contribution to the edition,
Mori Ogai's "Vita Sexualis" (Wita sekusuarisu), endangered public mor-

als. 10 In the autobiographical text, first-person narrator Kanai Shizuka,
a professor of philosophy, describes his sexual development over the
course of the first nineteen years of his life. The chronicle of increas-
ing sexual awareness begins with Kanai's first glance at erotic wood-
block prints as a child and leads up to an encounter with a professional
courtesan. Almost immediately after it was banned, critic Uchida Roan
deemed the text a "valuable educational document," adding that in the
West the secrets surrounding reproduction had long been a subject of
scientific research. Only in Japan did the "traditional unscientific mor-
als and hypocrisy" continue (Asahi Shinbun 6, 7, and 8 January 1910,
quoted in J. Rubin 1984: 92). However, the participants in the Yomiuri
Shinbun debate doubted the capability of literature to replace sex edu-
cation as they imagined it.
The vocabulary of the dichotomization of experts on the one hand
and laity on the other served as "rhetorical demarcation work" (Hil-
gartner 1990: 520) to monopolize the discourse on sex. It was employed
to secure the status of expert knowledge against all other forms of
knowledge and the experts themselves against all other speakers. In this
way pedagogues and medical doctors strove to obtain authority over an
entire series of decisions. They were to decide what kind of knowledge
was recognized as "scientific," "true," and "valid." They also were to
decide to whom and to what degree this knowledge should be disclosed.
In addition, they insisted that they knew best where, when, and by
whom sex education should be carried out.
These pedagogues and medical doctors were indeed experts in their
fields. Many had written lengthy books on pedagogical or medical is-
sues, had published in the most prestigious journals, and held powerful
positions in Japan's most respected educational and academic institu-
tions. Some of them had studied in Germany or elsewhere in Europe,
were members of their respective international professional associations,
and had presented their work at international conferences and in other
professional forums. Fujikawa Yii was among those who represented
Japan at the International Hygiene Exhibition in London in I884 and in
Dresden in I911. He was in good company. The Catalogue of Exhibits
from the Imperial Japanese Government (Katalog der von der Kaiserlich
Japanischen Regierung ausgestellten Gegenstande~ 191 I) was written by
leading representatives of Japan's modern health regime. Among the
authors were Kitazato Shibasaburo, a microbiologist and director of
the Research Institute for Infectious Diseases; Doi Keizo, founder of the
Japanese Society for the Prevention of Venereal Disease (Nihon Seibyo

Yobo Kyokai};11 Hata Sahachiro, director of the Imperial Dermatologi-
cal University Clinic Tokyo, who together with Paul Ehrlich had devel-
oped the first medication for the treatment of syphilis; and Fujikawa Yii
(Katalog I9II :4I).12
Out of professional convention as much as necessity (i.e., a lack of
"allies" in Japan), scholars, educators, and scientists enhanced their ex-
pert status by appointing Western scholars as authorities to confirm and
justify their claims. Whether speaking favorably of willpower training,
emphasizing the necessity of implementing sex education in schools, or
questioning parents' ability to enlighten children and youth on sexual
matters, they called on Western scholars and pointed out over and over
again the significance of the condition of the national body. Western
scholars, theories, and institutions mainly meant those from Germany,
as well as, to a lesser extent, Britain and France. The advanced German
medicine and comparatively authoritarian German pedagogy appealed
most to Japanese pedagogues and medical doctors until the early twen-
tieth century, in a way continuing the process of widespread adoption
and adaptation foreshadowed by government institutions during the
first half of the Meiji era (Bartholomew I989). Apart from a few excep-
tions, these Western scholars remained anonymous in the Yomiuri Shin-
bun debate. Their works were cited mostly in references to the order of
things in the West and served primarily to underscore the Japanese au-
thors' own opinions.
This strategy of referring to internationally circulating ideas, theor-
ies, and research results was not specific to Japan, the beginning of the
twentieth century, or writings on sexual matters. 13 Such references were
evoked in order to achieve recognition for new ideas or fields of research
in other national settings as well (Okamoto I983b; Hirakawa I989;
Nye I99I: 387-388). Britain's sexologists pointed to their German and
French colleagues (Porter and Hall I995:278), Chinese sex reformers
looked to both the West and Japan (Dikotter 1995; Shapiro I999), Rus-
sians compared their sexual issues to those of Western Europe (Engel-
stein 1992: I-I3), and Americans tried to fend off the sexological writ-
ings of Europeans (Gevitz I992). For Japan, the use of "the West" as a
rhetorical figure had several functions. References to the West opened a
discursive space for the demands for sex education and sex research and
the claims of their propagators to cover ever more terrain. The debate in
the Yomiuri Shinbun was just one of many stages in the expansion of dis-
cursive space that facilitated the colonization of the "sexual problem"
by pedagogy and medicine and thus by both education and scholarly in-
quiry. "The West" was used as a synonym for certain claims to truth and
the importance of scientific knowledge in general.
The participants in the Yomiuri Shinbun debate had no sympathy for
what they referred to as Japan's "tradition." Instead, they denounced
whatever they felt had to be overcome as "old traditions," "false be-
liefs," or "heterodoxy." The appearance of experts marked the break
with "false, unscientific interpretations," which were confronted with
"correct, scientific, modern, civilized knowledge." The proponents of
sex education and sex research sided with a great portion of the edu-
cated classes in this respect. The educated middle class supported the
prohibition of public nudity and exuberant dancing at folk festivals (see
Muta 1992; Nomura 1990). Its members also felt that certain religious
rituals, such as phallic worship to promote fertility, endangered Japan's
new status as a "civilized" country. Police commonly justified their ac-
tions against these practices by classifying them as "superstition and ab-
solute nonsense" and pointing out that they negated the "rationality of
modern science" (Garon 1994: 353 -3 54)
Participants in the debate further criticized the (supposed) secrecy
surrounding the "sexual problem" in Japan and praised Western sex re-
search. They criticized Japan's educational system, which had deprived
girls of higher education for such a long time. They pointed out the (sup-
posed) equality of the sexes in the West. In an attempt to justify their
claims of women's nature as different and inferior to men's or as sensitive
and untrustworthy, they castigated Confucian gender norms for render-
ing women sick (Nagai 1916:277, 284), only to praise ancient Greek
and highly misogynist nineteenth-century German and Austrian philos-
ophers, including Arthur Schopenhauer and Otto Weininger. They were
able to read accurately both Western and Japanese sources, whether on
the relationship between venereal diseases and prostitution or the results
of physical examinations of conscripts or students and their implications
for the health of the national body. Whether the texts and theories they
referred to were statistical, sociological, or medical, and whether the
studies they resulted from were literary, historiographical, or philo-
sophical was of secondary importance. All of them seemed suited to
heighten the demand for sex education and to emphasize the necessity
of comprehensive empirical sex research in Japan.
Participants in the debate on sex education frequently and explicitly
associated themselves with Western science and Western scholars, em-
Debating Sex Education 8I
phasizing their importance for japan as a modern nation. This incorpo-

ration of "Western friends" in the Yomiuri Shinbun debate took various
forms. One was the notion of the earliest Western work. Yubara, for ex-
ample, mentioned "the earliest [Western] work" on masturbation, en-
titled Onanie (Yubara 1908: 5). He did not note the author's name or
a publication date but he was most likely referring to L~ Onanislne ou
Dissertation physique sur les Maladies produites par fa Masturbation J
authored by the Swiss physician Simon Auguste Andre David Tissot and
originally published in 1760 but widely read only in the nineteenth cen-
tury (see Hirschfeld 1926:286; Braun 1995:27-100).14
Other frequently used figures of speech were references to the "fa-
mous Western scientist" and the "well-known Western scholar." Un-
derscoring the rhetorical function of references to the West that has been
emphasized by several scholars of modern japan (see, e.g., Barshay
1988; Robertson 1998), japanese authors sometimes presented the
work of "a famous Western scholar" in ways contrary to its reputation
in the West. Minami, for example, presented the doctor and sexual ped-
agogue Friedrich Wilhelm Forster as "the Western authority" on sex ed-
ucation (Minami R. 1908b:5). In Germany, however, Forster was con-
sidered a radical opponent of sex education. There, Magnus Hirschfeld,
an influential sexologist and hygienist at the Institut fur Sexualwissen-
schaft und Eugenik in Berlin, considered Forster's recommendations-
such as his suggestion to "appear quietly in the evening, take off the
boots silently, close the door in a disciplined manner, keep conversation
muffled with respect for those who want to rest" in order to prevent sex-
ual arousal-to be simply naIve and lacking any sense of reality (Hirsch-
feld 1926: 104).
Participants in the Yomiuri Shinbun debate also referred to works
more precisely, but these instances were exceptions rather than the rule.
Shimoda, for example, explained that it was the "famous American psy-
chologist" George M. Beard who coined the term "neurasthenia" in his
book American Nervousness: Its Causes and Consequences (1881). In
fact, Beard was a New York physician who had coined the term "neur-
asthenia" in the 18 60S. 15 Shimoda added that the phenomenon dated
back to the time of Hippocrates in ancient Greece, although its occur-
rence as a "developmental disease" (hattatsubyo) was observed only at
the end of the nineteenth century. "The German pedagogue" Wilhelm
Erb, wrote Shimoda, made this observation in About the Increasing
Nervousness of Our Time (Ober die wachsende Nervositat unsrer Zeit),
published in Heidelberg in 1893. Eventually, neurasthenia was studied

extensively by "England's most prominent sexologist," Havelock Ellis,
in Man and Woman (Shimoda I904a:407).16
This strategy of "bringing in Western friends" enabled Japanese sex-
ologists and other intellectuals to ally themselves with the project of mo-
dernity itself, emphasizing the feeling of being up to what Jose Ortega y
Gasset would call the "level of the times" (Ortega y Gasset I9 8 5 [I929]:
23-24). "Modern" and "modernity" were insisted upon as a mode, set
against the traditional modes of the past. In these intellectuals' texts, the
term "modern" expressed a consciousness of a new life superior to the
old life, and at the same time an imperative call for Japan to rise to
the "level of the times." Setting their modern concept of sex education
against what some perceived as "old, unscientific, and superstitious be-
liefs" symbolically provided these authors and their claims with a future
by banishing japan's tradition "below the level of history" and into
the pre-Enlightenment past. "Modern," noted Henri Lefebvre (I995
[I962]:I68) more than thirty years later in an influential text on the
meaning of modernity, was a word that had been used in triumphant
self-justification as a means of relegating to the past everything that
those who spoke did not consider part of themselves.
The Yomiuri Shinbun debate made sexual desire an issue of education
and public debate, and it was not long before other print media followed
suit. The same year, the monthly Central Review (Chuo Karon) sum-
marized Fujikawa's views on sex education (Fujikawa Y. I908a). In
September I9I1 another monthly, New Review (Shinkoron), printed
more than seventy pages of articles on "theories of sexual desire" (seiyo-
kuron), triggering a wave of similar publications. 17 And in January 19I2,
only a few months before Habuto Eiji reported his observations about
Germany, the Central Review further stirred public interest and concern
by printing the comments of schoolmasters of middle and girls' schools,
as well as teachers' colleges, about whether their male and female stu-
dents were provided with "knowledge about sexual desire" (seiyoku ni
kan suru chishiki). As it turned out, almost two-thirds of these schools
were still pondering the questions discussed in this chapter, while in one-
third of the schools some kind of sex education had begun to take place
(Chuo Koron I9I2). It would be almost ten years before Yoshida Ku-
maji's precondition for sex education would be fulfilled and teachers
could ground their sex education in Japanese empirical sex research--
the subject of the next chapter-rather than in Western theories and
findings.
CHAPTER 3
Sexology for the Masses

My science is not born from reading and thinking alone; it
also arises from my lectures, journeys, and conversations,
from answering audiences' questions, from correspondence
with readers and students, and from the advice on life that
I attempt to give.
Yamamoto Senji, "Milieu and
Background Intellectual of My Own",I921
In February 1925, Yamamoto Senji, a thirty-six-year-old bachelor of sci-

ence, explained how he conducted sex research, as he had done before.
This time, however, he chose to publish his explanation in the first issue
of a small journal entitled Birth Control Review (Sanji Chosetsu Hyo-
ron)~ published in Kamokyo ward in Kyoto. Yamamoto and his friends
sold this first issue of the Birth Control Review to a few professors and
physicians in Kyoto. A few months later, three thousand copies of the
fourth issue were printed and sent to subscribers all over Japan (Sanji
Chosetsu Hyoron 1925d:40). Yamamoto directed readers who were in-
terested in "purely scientific research" (jun gakujutsuteki kenkyu) to his
more scholarly publications and explained that this particular article
was meant to grab the attention of "non-experts" or "ordinary people"
(senmon gakusha naranu ippan no hitobito).
On the remaining pages, he acknowledged that in Japan and else-
where, economic and social changes had brought more and more people
to large cities, where they lived in ever more crowded settings. These
modern transformations of social life, he continued, had resulted in
an increase in sexual problems, horrible crimes, family tragedies, the
growth of prostitution, and the spread of venereal diseases. Many people,
Yamamoto observed, were seeing doctors to receive treatment for these
venereal diseases, but others turned to dubious pamphlets and maga-
zines promising "secret remedies." Entire theories about human sexual-
ity and, for that matter, humankind were being formed exclusively on
the basis of the study of sick people. Thus, he wrote, people had come
to associate "sexology" (seigaku) exclusively with writings on venereal
diseases and "perverse sexual desire" (hentai seiyoku).
Yamamoto conceded that these books were not entirely useless for
people who were infected with a venereal disease; however, he stated,
they might lead perfectly healthy people to develop negative attitudes
about sex, associating it exclusively with disease and perversion (Ya-
mamoto Senji 1925a:31-33). Reevaluating the sexology practiced by
physicians, he demanded that it be enriched by biology, economics, jur-
isprudence, political science, history, folklore, and other "cultural sci-
ences" (bunka kagaku). Praising the invaluable impact sexology had
had on the social system, the arts, and the sciences in Western countries
since World War I, Yamamoto suggested that sexology in Japan should
proceed in the same direction. In his view, sexology in Japan should aim
at producing great scholars of sex similar to Britain's Havelock Ellis and
Germany's Iwan Bloch, Hermann Rohleder, and Magnus Hirschfeld
(Yamamoto Senji 1925a:33), and he clearly imagined himself as such a
figure.
In Yamamoto's eyes, sexology in Europe had done away with many
stereotypes there. If sexologists and other courageous people failed to
disseminate new knowledge about sex in Japan, Yamamoto declared,
"Life can not be lived in a correct way" (jinsei wa tadashiku sugasu kata
wa dekinu). The new knowledge about sex, which he had set out to
create, based on Japanese empirical data, and wished more readers of
the Birth Control Review to welcome, rested on a statistically defined
normalcy. Driven by and based on the study of "normal life" (heisei no
seikatsu), its primary task was the study of healthy people's "normal sex
lives" (jotai no seiseikatsu) (Yamamoto Senji 1925a:3 3). Yamamoto was
aware that terms like "healthy" and "normal" (he also used the word
seijo) were far from self-explanatory and highly problematic. However,
he rarely said more about this matter than that he was interested in a
sexology that was not exclusively concerned with pathologies. It is clear
that he saw himself and his fellow sexologists as being at a distance from
physicians, if not in opposition to them, as they only dealt with sick
people. By the mid-I920S, Yamamoto Senji had become one of the most
important proponents of the study of sexual behavior in Japan.
Systematically acquired data, Yamamoto suggested, should be a re-
quirement for bringing to "the masses" a "purely scientific sex edu-
cation" (jun kagakuteki seikyoiku). Yamamoto and his friend Yasuda
Tokutaro, who later would become a medical doctor and historian of

sexuality, adopted the rhetoric of earlier proponents of sex education
when they condemned confession and scandal stories in entertainment
magazines and some women's journals for their frivolous treatment of
sexual issues (Yamamoto Senji 192Ie, 1924a-b). They also declared
war on "ancient sexual knowledge," which they saw as resting on su-
perstition and "false folklore"-a reference to the Buddhist command-
ment for asceticism and what they perceived to be the related "false
ideas of sexual hygiene," as well as the "feudal repression" of sexuality
that unnecessarily burdened youth (Yamamoto's own childhood and
youth, he once confessed, had been overshadowed by a fear of sex) (Ya-
mamoto Senji 1921).
Born in 1889, Yamamoto grew up in the sheltered environment of a
bourgeois family that ran an inn in Kyoto. In a brief autobiographical
account of his life, Yamamoto noted that as a child, he was interested
mostly in flowers and plants. After the first year of middle school, his
parents allowed him to move to Tokyo to learn gardening, which he did.
Following the recommendation of one of his teachers, he attended an
English course in the evenings. He read Japanese translations of Western
scientific works and soon also read books in English. Among these were
Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species and Havelock Ellis's Studies
in the Psychology of Sex, which he eventually classified as "a symbol for
the new century" and translated into Japanese (Yamamoto Senji 1921f:
74-77)1
In 1907, Yamamoto went to Canada, where he initially planned to
stay for five years and study to become a botanist. He went back to
school and graduated from a public high school in Vancouver. In addi-
tion to perfecting his English, he acquired skills in German and French
and learned some Latin and Greek. In contrast to many students of the
early Meiji era who were sent abroad on government stipends (Bowers
1970), Yamamoto had to earn his own living. Initially making ends meet
with house and garden work, he later took up work in a laboratory and
became increasingly interested in biology. He continued his studies of
evolutionary theory and developed an interest in socialism. Still in Can-
ada, equipped with a "cleverness that made [him] disregard the opinions
of others" and with "a strong intellect and an aggressive determination
to dry the tears of the oppressed "-he decided to "discover under the
microscope something meaningful for the welfare of humankind" (Ya-
mamoto Senji 1921).
In 1921 he abandoned his original career plans, returned to Japan,
86 Sexology for the Masses
and began to study zoology, first at Doshisha University and then, from
1914 on, at Kyoto University. After completing his studies in Kyoto he
continued his studies at the University of Tokyo, where he not only oc-
cupied himself with his zoological studies but also attended lectures on
physiology, gynecology, dermatology, and urology. In 1917 he earned a
bachelor of science degree and graduated under the guidance of Profes-
sor W. Watase, a former professor at Clark University and the Univer-
sity of Chicago. Ironically foreshadowing his future professional en-
gagement, Yamamoto's thesis was entitled "The Spermatogenesis of the
Japanese Water Salamander" (Yamamoto Senji 19 21 : 514).
In 1920 Yamamoto was accepted into the master's course in biology
at Kyoto University and began teaching biology at Doshisha University.
Two years later he also accepted a lectureship for a three-semester
course entitled "Outline of the Sciences" at Kyoto University. The course
was open to second-year students and drew a heterogeneous group of
about 140 seventeen- to twenty-year-olds, all male, majoring in politi-
cal science, economics, literature, and other fields in the arts and hu-
manities. Initially he conceived the course as a human biology lecture
and taught a wide range of subjects, including human reproduction and
development, genetics, eugenics, cell theory, the theory of evolution, and
the human life cycle (see Odagiri 1979b :5 0 9, 576).
Adjusting the course more and more to what he believed interested
students most, Yamamoto gradually turned it into a sex education
course. His introductory remarks were phrased as a "warning for mis-
understandings that may easily arise" (Yamamoto Senji 192Ia:5I). He
explained that the "science of sex" (sei no kagaku) did not encompass
all of biology and acknowledged that there were many other important
biological issues besides reproduction. As his lecture was a biology
lecture- implying that it was not a lecture in medicine, pathology, or
psychiatry-Yamamoto announced that he would not be dealing with
venereal diseases or research on perverse psychology but with perfectly
"normal" sexual phenomena from a biological perspective. Informing
the students that they would become familiar with many technical terms
and foreign (European) words, he said that using technical scientific ter-
minology was unavoidable for the subject matter and also necessary to
escape "obscene associations." He recommended the middle school
textbooks in physics and natural history to graduates from professional
schools and urged them to take a look also at the textbooks from girls'
schools (Yamamoto Senji 192Ia:51-53). Because sex education com;...
monly was ignored as a subject in schools, Yamamoto went beyond the
boundaries of an introductory course and eventually designed an "Out-

line of Sexual Knowledge" focusing on general questions of conception,
reproduction, and human development (Yamamoto Senji 1921f). Even-
tually, the "Outline" became a multilayered effort, not only to enlighten
students on sexual issues, but also to create knowledge about sex in
ways unprecedented in Japanese history in an attempt to establish a new
intellectual field at the fringes of academia.
PIONEERING SEX RESEARCH: FOR TRUTH AND FREEDOM
Positioning himself and other academics as both "creators of knowledge

and at the same time original researchers and brokers of knowledge"
(YamalTIoto Senji 1921a), Yamamoto revised his courses at Kyoto Uni-
versity and Doshisha University and developed a model for systematic
sex education. He distributed questionnaires to several hundred stu-
dents who had attended his courses. 2 The questionnaire was entitled
"Light, some light! "-supposedly Goethe's last words on his death-
bed-and the respondents were asked to fill it out carefully "for the
sake of truth and freedom" (shil1ri 110 tame~ jiyu 110 tame). "To create
the future culture, we first have to awake and gather facts about our-
selves," it proclaimed. Suggesting that Japan could create something
other than its "unique contributions to world culture of bean-jam buns
and rickshaws," the questionnaire urged students to cooperate in the
building of a new culture. On a less dramatic note, it also reminded stu-
dents that perversion (hel1tai) and normalcy (jotai) were not defined
well enough to be differentiated from one another, and the survey would
be a means of clarifying the distinctions between the two (Yamamoto
Senji 1921g:323).
The first nine questions of the survey concerned the familial situation
of the respondents: the date and place of their birth; where they had
lived the longest; the schools from which they had graduated; the pro-
fessions of their parents, older brothers, and themselves; the number,
age differences, and sex of their siblings; the age and sex of their chil-
dren; and their religious beliefs and tendencies of thought. In order to
ensure anonymity, respondents were told to leave any of these first nine
questions blank if they did not \vant to answer them (Yamamoto Senji
19 21 g:3 23 -3 24)
The remaining eight questions concerned students' reactions to Ya-
mamoto's lecture. Among them were questions about the good and bad
effects of the course and other, more specific ones about the course:
whether the respondents had felt sexually stimulated-i.e., had felt

mental excitement, erections, or had experienced involuntary ejacula-
tion-- at any point in the course, and if so, how it had occurred; whether
they felt that there were incorrect, prejudiced, or disagreeable elements
in Yamamoto's lectures; whether they had any further questions;
whether the source of their knowledge prior to the course had been
people, physicians, or books; whether they thought that Yamamoto
should publicize his course and lecture to a broader audience or only to
educated people; and finally, whether they had any other thoughts or re-
quests concerning the course (Yamamoto Senji I92Ig:324-325).
Pleased with the results of the survey, Yamamoto summarized the
answers and published them, together with a commentary, as a small
booklet, which he distributed to the students. Hoping that they would
become as convinced as he was that the overwhelmingly positive re-
sponse of students could only be interpreted as further proof of the ne-
cessity of sex research and scholarly sex education and would then ap-
prove of his sex education method, Yamamoto also sent the booklet to
more than a hundred "educated people" for comments. Among them
were prominent democrats and socialists, including Kagawa Toyohiko,
Sakai Toshihiko, Yoshino Sakuzo, and Oka Asajiro. Different versions
of his summary appeared consecutively in two large newspapers, the
Osaka Asahi Shinbun and the Tokyo Asahi Shinbun, and in the maga-
zine Outlook (Taikan), whose editor was none other than Okuma Shi-
genobu, former prime minister, foreign minister, and chancellor of
Waseda University (Yamamoto Senji I92Ib-d).3
The support of the print media and other concerned intellectuals fur-
ther encouraged Yamamoto to launch a larger survey that would not just
contribute to the improvement of his course and serve as a tool to push
for sex education, but in fact would comprise a considerable body of
statistical data on Japanese men's and (to a lesser extent) women's sex
lives. 4 Yamamoto and his colleague and friend from the Medical De-
partment at Kyoto University, Yasuda Tokutaro, began to carry out a
more comprehensive survey. Ten years younger than Yamamoto, Yasuda
was on his way to becoming a medical doctor and sexologist who would
translate some of the major works of Sigmund Freud into Japanese and
also write one of the first historiographical accounts of homosexuality
in Japanese history (Yasuda T. 1925, 1935).5 Inspired by the omnipres-
ent "remedies" for masturbating youth in medical and popular maga-
zines, he had carried out a small study among medical students to gather
information on the actual extent of autoerotic practices among young

men. Between 1922 and 1928, Yasuda and Yamamoto ,conducted a
large-scale survey based on Yanlamoto's first questionnaire that eventu-
ally covered the responses of five thousand men and a small number of
women. Respondents carne from diverse social backgrounds and in-
cluded students from several universities and workers' schools, \vhite-
and blue-collar workers, farmers, teachers, physicians, and pharmacists
(Yamamoto Senji 1924C:218).
Yamamoto presented an initial report on male students entitled "Sta-
tistical Survey of the Sex Lives of Japan's Male Students" ("Nihonjin
dangakusei no seiseikatsu no tokeiteki chosa") to the Kyoto Medical
Association and published it in the Kyoto Medical Journal (Kyoto Igaku
Zasshi) (Yamamoto Senji 1923). An extended version based on the an-
swers of more than one thousand respondents was published as a series
of articles in the Journal of Physiology (Seirigaku Kenkyu), another rep-
utable journal edited in 1923 and 1924 by Ishikawa Hidetsurumaru
(1878-1947) (Yamamoto Senji 1924c; see also Odagiri 1979b:SI4).
Both researchers were driven by doubts about the power of medical
studies to describe and explain sexual behavior in "healthy bodies"
(kenkotai). They hoped that the new science of sex, and their surveys for
that matter, would contribute to the liberation of young people from
"falsehood and menace." Those who "loved the truth" and those who
trusted in the impending "happiness for humankind" were called upon
to participate in Yamamoto and Yasuda's investigation and tear down
the walls that had been erected by the authors of medical studies of vene-
real diseases and the potentially dubious sexual practices of ,vhat Yama-
moto and Yasuda believed to be a small number of people (Yamamoto
Senji 1924C:208-209). They again emphasized their conviction that it
was not yet clear what exactly could be described as "normal" sexual
behavior and development. One of the goals of the survey was to estab-
lish reliable indicators of "normal" and "healthy" sexuality, which Ya-
mamoto and Yasuda imagined would emerge from statistical calcula-
tions done on the responses of a large number of people.
Initially, Yamamoto and Yasuda-and with them, probably the ma-
jority of the middle and upper classes-imagined a close correspon-
dence between the level of education and what they referred to as "sex-
ual morality" (seidotoku). Their assunlption that the educated urban
population possessed higher moral standards due to class heritage and
education identified them as typical representatives of the urban edu-
cated elite, who commonly insisted that the educated classes had to ful-
fill a particular responsibility as moral role models for the rest of the
population. 6 In the survey, sexual morality was defined by cultural prac-
tices and divided by class. It reflected the social status of partners in in-
stances of first sexual intercourse and the circumstances under which the
young men surveyed had first been confronted with sexual activity (of
others).
What kind of answers did the survey generate? In response to a whole
set of questions on their first sexual intercourse, more than half of the
young men surveyed indicated that they had had their first sexual inter-
course before the age of eighteen. 7 Among the men who had entered the
workforce after middle school, almost half had had a prostitute as their
first sexual partner. Another 30 percent had their first sexual encounter
with an "unmarried woman," 14 percent with a "married woman," and
a meager I percent with their wives (Yamamoto Senji 1924C:223). Some
of these young men explained that they had been enticed by older col-
leagues at work to spend evenings in the red-light districts. One young
man reported that he realized that he had become an adult when he
turned twenty and became interested in the opposite sex. Upon this re-
alization he began to stroll about the red-light district and engage in sex
with strangers every night (Yamamoto Senji 1924C:238; see also Oka-
moto 1983a).8
Yamamoto and Yasuda found that the rate of prostitutes as first sex-
ual partners was still relatively high, 33 percent, among men who were
attending or had attended high schools and universities. Phrasing their
interpretation as social critique, they argued that the high rate of young
men who had chosen prostitutes as their first sexual partners was merely
a reflection of two social nuisances. In their view, blame was to be placed
on both the capitalist order of Japanese society and the "nationalist ed-
ucation" (kokka kyoiku) of Meiji and Taish6 Japan, which had overem-
phasized the training of personality and the cultivation of character.
Under the enormous pressures of capitalism, the two sex researchers
concluded, young men could not help but consider sex as a site of mere
economic exchange and an escape route from the many expectations put
on them as patriotic citizens (Yamamoto Senji 1924c:207). They de-
fended Japan's youth against social critics who observed that by the end
of the 1910S, collective efforts toward a national goal had ceased. Youths
were criticized for their lack of interest in the state and for a general lack
of a coherent existence. They were perceived as disinterested, colorless,
and either lacking ambition or exclusively focused on their own social
advancement (risshin shusse) and ignorant of social issues and goals (see
Harootunian 1974: 10).
Although Yamamoto and Yasuda saw young men's casual indulgence
in sex with prostitutes as problematic, they blamed neither youth nor
prostitutes but the capitalist order of society that made sex a commod-
ity. Critical of the notions of "national unity" and "national goals," and
aware of the great class differences in Japanese society, Yamamoto
promoted the advancement of a new "culture" and "society" (he never
spoke of the "nation" or the "empire") that was, in his eyes, based on
the dissolution of capitalism and the liberation of the working class from
its miseries. Although Yamamoto and Yasuda insisted that men, partic-
ularly those who lacked an appropriate upbringing, perceived women
primarily as objects of desire (hindering the development of mutual re-
spect), they also concluded in their report that sex education had to be
provided for all social classes. The sexual practices across class bound-
aries that came to light in their survey, Yamamoto noted, were simply an
expression of the pressing need for a "sexual enlightenment movement
for the masses" (taishu ippan ni taisuru seiteki keimo undo) (Yamamoto
Senji 1924C:286).
Yamamoto and Yasuda also were interested in the question of when
the respondents learned about sexual intercourse, and again they drew
class-related conclusions from the survey results. One factory worker
wrote that he had first become aware of sexual intercourse when he was
ten years old and happened to watch two "juvenile delinquents" (furyo
shonen), who were two years older than he was, having sex with an
older woman from their neighborhood. Another factory worker re-
ported that he first realized that men and women have sexual intercourse
when he went upstairs in his parents' restaurant one night and found
the waitress engaged in sexual intercourse with a guest. Yet another re-
ported that he was with a theater group when he was nineteen years old
and one of his friends "taught him the taste of male-male love" (nan-
shoku). From these examples and others primarily provided by workers,
Yamamoto and Yasuda concluded that the circumstances for the initial
awareness of sexual intercourse varied according to class and that par-
ticularly in uneducated young members of the working class, first sex-
ual encounters were characterized by coincidence and unpreparedness.
They suggested that there would be more examples similar to these three
if they questioned only workers instead of the mixed group covered by
their survey (Yamamoto Senji I924C:25I).
Another of their assumptions, which was shared by many of their
contemporaries, was contradicted by the results of the study. As dis-

cussed in chapter 2, masturbation was generally established as a patho-
logical matter that warranted cautious social control. Pedagogues and
medical doctors commonly had argued that "normal" and "healthy"
children succumbed to masturbation only because of negative social
influences. A set of fifteen questions in the survey were designed to pro-
vide detailed coverage of the first instance of the respondent's awareness
of the sex drive, various types of ejaculation, and masturbation. 9 Ac-
cording to the survey's results, most respondents had first become aware
of their sex drive between the ages of six and twelve. Yamamoto and Ya-
suda classified both of these ages as times of crisis. According to the sur-
vey, the first was marked by the entry into a new social environment and
separation from the parental home, the second as the onset of puberty.
The first sexual experience was commonly associated with masturba-
tion. Some young men explained that they had found out about the plea-
sures of masturbation by themselves, but many described a situation in
which they had been either told about or taught masturbation practices
by older friends. One of them was taught the tricks by an older pupil
in elementary school at the age of eight. For others, the crucial experi-
ence had occurred while living in dormitories with several other youth
or in barracks after they had been drafted (Yamamoto Senji I924c:
254- 2 55).
Although Yamamoto and Yasuda acknowledged significant age dif-
ferences in regard to the first instance of masturbation, another result
was much more important to them: They found that 96 percent of their
respondents had masturbated and 86 percent had experienced noctur-
nal emissions. Based on these figures, they concluded that masturbation
was not a pathological phenomenon that needed to be fought with med-
ical treatments and repressive education. They declared it simply a nor-
mal feature of sexual behavior that occurred inevitably and had no neg-
ative effects on young men's healthy development (Yamamoto Senji
I 9 24c: 2 5 5; see also Oshikane I 977: I 69) .10 In order to underscore their
point that masturbation was normal, they coined new terms for the de-
velopment of human sexual behavior. In an effort to dissociate mastur-
bation from moral judgments, Yamamoto introduced and used jii (ji ==
self, i == consolation) in place of terms with questionable connotations,
such as jitoku (ji == self, toku == defilement), shuin (shu == hand, in == las-
civiousness), and akuheki or warukuse (bad habit).ll When an audience
member who was worried about the harmful effects of masturbation
approached Yamamoto, he typically responded in a sedate manner:
Sexology for the Masses 93
I am very happy that you have trusted me with your innermost secret. I al-
ready have been asked many questions like yours ... and would like to an-
swer in the following \vay: You say that you believe in the horrible conse-
quences and permanent damage of masturbation. As I already have said
on other occasions, this habit is completely normal for adolescents like you.
It is unnecessary to talk about it, as there are simply no psychological or
any other harmful effects. In former times, people believed that masturba-
tion was something horrible. As I already have said, however, masturbation
does not cause damage. When you enter into a healthy sex life it will disap-
pear by itself. (Yamamoto Senji 1921f:104-105)
Questions like this one from the audience at his lectures further encour-
aged Yamamoto in his attempts to show the normalcy of certain sexual
activities previously considered pathological (or at least a cause of path-
ologies). His efforts to normalize masturbation were based on the sta-
tistical findings of his surveys, but they were also driven more generally
by his insistence on a transnationally and transculturally universal char-
acter of sexuality. Hence, in his report, Yamamoto positioned himself by
implication in opposition to biological essentialists who insisted on the
uniqueness of the Japanese "race" or the peculiarity of Japanese culture
and were skeptical of Western science and its application to Japan. Ya-
mamoto and Yasuda viewed their study as proof of Sigmund Freud's the-
ory of sexuality (Freud 1962 [1905]), which had motivated Yasuda's in-
terest in conducting the survey in the first place. They also emphasized
the similarity of their results to studies carried out by Havelock Ellis,
Magnus Hirschfeld, and other European sexologists (notwithstanding
the selectiveness of these researchers' samples), siding with them on the
question of the internationalism of sexuality and sexology. In their eyes,
the similarity of young Japanese men's sexual development to that of
young Western men proved that there were no biological or "racial" dif-
ferences that were not eclipsed by individual ones. Yamamoto especially
(and Yasuda in later years) ,vas equipped with a solid knowledge of Eu-
ropean sexology, and by the beginning of the 1920S had already pub-
lished translations and reviews of German and English publications in
the field (see, e.g., Yamamoto Senji 1922a-b).
The fact that the name for their new science, seigaku~ derived from
the German nan1e Sexualwissenschaft also is highly significant. The term
Sexualwissenschaft had been coined by the medical doctor and "special
physician for sexual illnesses" Iwan Bloch in an extensive study entitled
The Sexual Life of Our Time and Its Relation to Modern Culture (Das
Sexualleben unserer Zeit in seinen Beziehungen zur modernen Kultur,
19 19 [1906]) .12 In his book, Bloch demanded an independent science of
sex that did justice to the biological as well as the cultural aspects of sex-
uality. In his view, the science of sex had to consolidate "all other sci-
ences' general biology, anthropology and ethnology, philosophy and
psychology, medicine, literature, and the study of culture in all of its di-
mensions" (Bloch I9I9 [I906]: prologue).
Yamamoto's interpretation of the results of his survey highlighted the
sameness and equality of all races, an observation that was also central
to some European sexologists' guiding principles. Hirschfeld, for ex-
ample, proclaimed that there were "no two countries on earth with the
exact same sexual arrangements," but that these dissimilarities were not
rooted in a difference of "sexual aptitudes" or "natural instincts," which
he believed to be entirely the same in peoples and races as entities.
Rather, the differences in sexual customs were determined by the great
variety of forms of sexual expression. Consequently, for Hirschfeld the
role of a "scientific study of human sexuality" lay in pioneering and be-
ing a precursor to nothing less than "human sexual rights" (Hirschfeld
I935 [I933]:I2). Similarly, Yamamoto and other sex reformers envis-
aged happiness and the liberation of the masses from wrong and op-
pressive beliefs. The equality of all races and the equality of the masses
was as much an element of their sexology as their socialist politics.
SEXOLOGY FOR THE MASSES
By the time he and Yasuda completed the survey, Yamamoto had been
engaged in debates about the role of science and scholars in society for
many years. As far back as his time at the University of Tokyo, Yama-
moto had been discontented with the dominant practices in science. He
had found it difficult to adapt himself to the aristocratic atmosphere at
the University of Tokyo and to make friends among the "young lords at
the most luxurious institution supported by the impoverished taxpayers
of this country" (Yamamoto Senji I92Ib: 5 I). He later wrote a manifesto
for the comprehensive reform of the scientific world of biology. In an es-
say for the newspaper Osaka Mainichi Shinbun~ "The Disillusionment
of the Taxonomists," Yamamoto attacked the rigidity of biological re-
search in terms of its domination by taxonomy and propagated what he
termed a "genuine biology" characterized by more dynamic research
methods.
Yamamoto strongly believed in a "science for humankind" (jinsei no
tame no kagaku)~ which for him was equivalent to opening up the acad-
emy and making scientific knowledge comprehensible and accessible to
the wider public. He felt that especially in his field of biology, which was
meant to "center on human society," too little was done to make scien-
tific knowledge available to the wider public. The main reason the gen-
eral public did not understand biology, Yamamoto argued, lay in its spe-
cialization. Biological research was done "on single trees without seeing
the entire forest." The experimental methods that dominated biological
research were incapable of explaining the entirety of individual and
social life. In Yamamoto's view, the "science for humankind" had to
strive to become more integrated. He viewed demography as a crucial
set of techniques for measuring births, deaths, disease rates, population
growth, marriages, politics, society, education, religion, hygienics, the
health system, and medicine. This set of techniques was meant to com-
plement the commonly used methods of inquiry, which he considered
reductionist (Yamamoto Senji 192 7e:4 92) .13 Sexology \vas of course not
the only field that emerged out of discontent with scientific practices in
established academic institutions.
Other Taisho intellectuals shared Yamamoto's concerns about sci-
entific theory and practice, the uses of science, and the role of scholars
in contemporary Japanese society. During the 1920S, representatives of
the newly flourishing fields of the social sciences and humanities brought
this understanding of science to the fore. 14 It was marked by a number
of shifts that were characteristic of scientific practices. For example,
the blending of social theory and activist involvement was characteristic
of Taisho intellectuals' concept of the social sciences. For many, interest
in the social sciences in general and sociology in particular rested less on
the necessity of developing analytical models and more on an acute
awareness of social problems (Soviak 1990; see also Hoston 1992 : 299).
This previously common overlap between scholarship and political
activism was first criticized as limiting the universities' autonomy and
freedom in the second decade of the twentieth century, when university
professors also became actively involved in party politics. IS The profes-
sionalization of journalism, as well as a steady increase in the number
of educational institutions (universities, teachers' colleges that also en-
gaged in research, and private research institutes), had two important ef-
fects. First, they prompted a dissolution of the previous monopoly over
the creation and validation of knowledge. Second, they brought about
the end of the University of Tokyo's dominance as the single recruitment
pool for the bureaucratic elite.
Society had changed rapidly during the years of World War I, and a
wave of internationalism and liberalism swept the intellectual world.
Discontented intellectuals and students protested against inequalities in

society and joined farmers and laborers in pressing the government for
reforms (Mitchell 1973: 3 19). Progressive leaders with liberal and so-
cialist leanings like Yoshino Sakuzo, Takano Iwasaburo, Kawai Eijiro,
Suzuki Bunji, Abe Isoo, and Yamamoto Senji aimed at mass mobiliza-
tion and strove to gain support for reforms among the wider populace.
They came from socioeconomic backgrounds that were decidedly differ-
ent from those prevalent in the Meiji era and attempted to open the po-
litical system to citizens who did not belong to the small political elite.
They promised more effective possibilities for social reform through the
academic and semi-academic world of the university, schools, political
and social movements, and the print media than were possible from
posts within the government.
The liberal Oyama Ikuo, for example, felt that the "democratization
of knowledge" was a requirement for an orderly democratization of pol-
itics. He believed that only a scientific method of social analysis would
provide a theoretical guide for social change {see Duus 1982:429,432).
Cultural critic Tsuchida Kyoson pointed out the lack of theories in
the social sciences that were based on the social realities of Japan and
pressed for empirical social research. In a similar vein, he castigated ac-
ademia for its ignorance of "events of the day" and its lack of "social in-
terest." Often intermingling with socialists and other social activists, so-
ciologists insisted that their field be based on empirical research within
Japan rather than theories and concepts that emerged from Euro-Amer-
ican societies. The sociologists' call to examine and perhaps separate
from Western theoretical concepts was invariably tied to the efforts to
make social problems visible and pressure the government into solving
them (see Soviak 1990:94-95).
It was no longer mainly alumni from the University of Tokyo who
were behind the progressive powers of the Taisho era. Social reformers
and scholars came in equal proportions from samurai, agricultural, and
mercantile families. The establishment of a new political awareness was
achieved primarily by a steadily growing class of intellectual workers
who attempted to capture new intellectual, social, and political terrain.
They presented themselves as the chief interpreters, creators, and popu-
larizers of knowledge. Many saw socialism as a model for the solution
to social problems. As Fukuda Hideko observed, the socialists who were
beginning to raise their voices on behalf of social justice and political
freedom were the true heirs of the early Meiji people's-rights movement
(see Hane 1988: 5 I ). The manifesto of the first Society for Sociology
(Shakai Gakkai), founded in 1896, for example, stated that "we must
study the principles of sociology and research actual social life in order
to control and avoid social problems" (see Kawamura N. 1990: 64). Af-
ter the dissolution of the Society for Sociology, Christian socialists such
as Katayama Sen, Murai Tomoshi, Abe Isoo, Kotoku Shiisui, and Kino-
shita Naoe, who for the most part had studied in the United States,
founded the Society for Socialist Studies. Amateur sociologists who were
not interested in socialism, such as Kato Hiroyuki, Takagi Masayoshi,
and Motoyoshi Yujiro, founded the Society for Sociological Studies in
the same year. 16
Empirical studies on Japanese culture and society that concentrated
on social problems came to be regarded with increasing distrust, whether
they concerned workers' lives and urban slum populations, like the stud-
ies of Kagawa Toyohiko (1880-1960), or sexual practices among Ja-
pan's youth. Kagawa Toyohiko, a Christian social reformer involved in
the labor movement and founder of the Japanese Salvation Army, pub-
lished Research on the Psychology of the Poor (Hinmin shinri no ken-
kyu) in 1915 and Crossing the Death Line (Shisen 0 koete) in 1920. His
investigations were based on interviews with the inhabitants of Kobe's
slums and were reason enough for Kagawa to be under close surveil-
lance by the authorities of public order. In 1921 he was arrested for the
first time for his interest in poverty as a social problem and his involve-
ment with the labor movement (see Ota T. 1980: 103 -104).17
Like the students of sociology, economics, and political science
who struggled to ground their respective disciplines in Japanese society
rather than in Western theory, Japan's first sex researchers strove to con-
solidate changes in scientific practice with broader social change and
to establish a science of sex. An important effect of these attempts was
the increase and diversification of creators and popularizers of knowl-
edge about sex. While some sexologists clearly welcomed and profited
from such an increase, others opposed these "nonscientific" writings
and strove to establish themselves as "scientific" authorities on sexual
knowledge. Their attempts to do so were manifested in various activi-
ties. Public lectures were one way of exchanging sexual knowledge with
a diverse audience, including medical doctors, mine and factory work-
ers, and teachers and students. Sexologists presented information on
sexual development, discussed the results of their research, and gave ad-
vice on sexual problems in specialized journals, women's and household
magazines, and household medical reference books.
Using diverse instruments and methods to gather data about sexual
practices in contemporary Japan, sexologists emulated the young gen-

eration of scholars in other emerging fields. Survey data were supple-
mented by information from personal letters from people who had
attended their public lectures or read their books and journals. Conver-
sations and discussions after public lectures also found their way into
the sexologists' publications. They considered all of these efforts legiti-
mate for the creation of a body of knowledge based on continuous in-
teraction between sexologists and their audience. The latter was not
only the receiver but at the same time the object of this new knowledge,
and thus was involved in its creation in a complex way. The sexologists
saw themselves as forerunners of a new and better society, and they saw
possibilities for decisive change.
Yamamoto and Yasuda's continuing survey on sexual behavior was a
major step in that direction, but they did not stop there. Yamamoto in
particular extended his authority through public lectures at other uni-
versities, schools, farm and labor unions, and community and city halls.
Between September 1921 and February 1924, he lectured in thirty
places in addition to giving his regular lectures at the Universities of Ky-
oto and Doshisha. Among these other sites were the Kyoto Prefectural
Medical University, the University of Tokyo, Waseda University, two free
universities in the Niigata and Nagano prefectures, and the Osaka La-
bor Union School, which had been established by socialist labor union
leaders (see Hane 1988: 152). He spoke at meetings of teachers' organ-
izations, to several teachers' unions in Tottori, Kochi, and other cities,
and to teachers of all types of other schools, including elementary
schools, girls' schools, and universities. He spoke to young company re-
cruits and farm youth groups and accepted invitations from publishing
houses and labor unions to speak to subscribers and laborers (Yama-
moto Senji 1921g:322, 1924C:218). In 1925 he reported that 13,000
people had come to hear his lectures in Osaka, Kyoto, and Nagoya, and
many more had attended his lectures in Kochi (Shikoku), Sakai, Yoneko,
Matsue, Miyatsu, Sonoe, Imazu, Nagoya, Nara, Nagano, Okayama,
Kagawa, and Tokyo (Yamamoto Senji 1925a:36).
A lecture normally lasted two hours and included time for discussion.
However, Yamamoto often was invited to do a lecture series of ten hours
or more. He meticulously recorded information about the event. He
noted the organization or person who had invited him (usually a repre-
sentative of the organization or group), and listed the site of the lecture
(often a public assembly building). He documented the size of the au-
diences (between 30 and 170 at a time), and the number of people who
had returned his survey (between 4 and 57 percent). He also documented

the dominant professions of his audiences, their age, and occasionally
other information (e.g., "Ten-hour course for factory workers," or the
exact title of his talk). The gender of the audience was not listed sepa-
rately but Yamamoto noted on five separate occasions that both men
and women were among the audience (Yamamoto Senji 192Ig:322,
19 24C:218).
A poster announcement for one of his two-hour talks included the
main topics of his talk:
TWO-HOUR LECTURE ON SEX EDUCATION:

OUTLINE OF SEXUAL KNOWLEDGE
Yamamoto Senji, Lecturer in the Department of Science at Kyoto University

Contents: (I) The essential accurate knowledge about reproduction, which
is of such great importance to life; (2) Knowledge about the construction of
the male and female sex organs; (3) The male sexual apparatus: sperm, tes-
ticles, vas deferens, sperm production, ej aculation, urethra, penis; (4) The
female sex organs: ovaries, Fallopian tube, uterus, vagina, and hymen.
Break: Answering questions
(5) Sexual diseases and their prevention; (6) Emission (isei), masturbation
(jii), sexual intercourse; (7) Menstruation, conception, pregnancy, birth.
The Lecturer's Goals: (I) Until now, young people, misguided by informa-
tion whose validity is questionable, have been faced with grievous worries
in their blind search. If we have accurate knowledge, we must ensure that it
is used in order to lessen harm and suffering. We should not waste our en-
ergy, but rather pass on accurate knowledge immediately.
(2) There is a comparative lack of knowledge on how common (jinj6) men
and women live their lives, since many scholars have busied themselves
with the morals, habits, and customs of the past ... and in doing so, have
dealt with nothing but diseases. We must first of all get to know ourselves.
Therefore, the lecturer, a scholar, will speak about this phenomenon for a
general audience. (Yamamoto Senji 192Ig:320-32I)
One of these public lectures resulted in the sudden end of Yamamoto's

academic career. In 1922, he went on a lecture tour from Osaka to
Kobe, Nagoya, and other small cities. On 17 April he spoke in Tottori.
After several warnings by police observers, his talk eventually was in-
terrupted and he was pulled off the stage. The police report noted that
Yamamoto had used technical terms but had nonetheless encouraged
masturbation, approved of abortion, and talked about "other obsceni-
ties" (see Odagiri 1979b:514-515). As a consequence of the scandal he
was fired from his position at Kyoto University and shortly thereafter
from Doshisha University. This sudden but definite exclusion from aca-
demic institutions certainly contributed to Yamamoto's intensified in-
volvement in the education of laborers and his engagement in the Labor
Farmer Party (Rodo Nominto). From January I924 on, Yamamoto
worked as a teacher at a worker's school in Osaka and as the editor of
an educational section of the press for the Labor Farmer Party. When a
labor school was opened in Kyoto in April of the same year, he became
its director. In 1928, as one of two representatives of the Labor Farmer
Party's left wing, he was elected as a parliamentary representative in Ky-
oto (see Scalapino 1967: 34).18 By the time of his election, his sexologi-
cal journal Sex and Society (Sei to Shakai)~ which had been one of more
than a dozen such journals, had ceased to exist.
SEXOLOGICAL JOURNALS AND THE SCIENCE OF SEX
There are people who want to read about sexuality but

are embarrassed because they doubt the educational
value of our journal. The youth of today read about the
experience of being seduced or about wedding-night
memories in women's magazines-texts that are poorly
written and have hardly any content. Mothers, you
must at least take a look at our journal Sexuality! Our
journal has been approved as a professional journal
by the responsible authorities .... Sexuality pursues
the viewpoint that it is necessary to carry out research
on humans and acquire knowledge about them.
[Sexuality] is a unique journal that carries out crucial
research. Recruit even more readers! We put our hopes
In you.
Sei November 1927
Sexuality (Sei; see figure 7) was but one of a dozen or so sexological

journals founded between the late 19IOS and the early I930S, when the
number of sexological books and specialized journals, as well as sexo-
logical articles in women's magazines, popular science magazines, and
general periodicals, exploded. The remarkable increase in the number of
publications on sex was widely acknowledged all over the nation. News-
papers reported in various fashions about this phenomenon, in tones
sometimes alarmist, sometimes approving. 19 Even though academic in-
stitutions were not eager to acknowledge the emergence of a new field
Figure 7. The spring 1920 issue of Akiyama Yoshio's journal
Sexuality (Sei) dealt almost exclusively with "female sexual de-
sire" (fujin seiyoku). The mission statement of the journal fea-
tures poems by Friedrich von Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe dealing with desire and sacrifice. The cover shows an
adaptation of a scene from Goethe's Faust depicting Mephisto.
of research and teaching, sexology did become situated at the fringes of

academia. The science of sex was furthered by the writings and other ac-
tivities of scholars, journalists, medical doctors, biologists, bureaucrats,
and other intellectuals and socialreformers who identified sex and sex-
uality as the pivotal point of debates about society and social reform,
whether they feared for national security, demanded freedom or social
control, or insisted on the "truth about sex."
By the 1920S, this group of scholars and professionals could rely on
a continuously expanding school education system and increasing liter-
acy among all classes. Both factors had led to a significantly larger read-
ership than had existed in previous decades. For men, literacy had im-
proved tremendously during the first decade of the twentieth century,
when the portion of illiterate conscripts dropped from 23 percent in
1899 to 0.5 percent in 1929 (Kiyokawa 1991; Nagamine 2001: 162).
Literacy among women virtually exploded with the expansion of sec-
ondary schooling during the I920S. In I930, readers could choose from
more than I I,OOO magazines and journals, and the population of 65 mil-
lion bought 10 million daily newspapers. The numbers of readers who
subscribed to one or more newspapers or magazines significantly in-
creased as well, and more and more people borrowed their neighbors'
or friends' copies or went to local libraries to read newspapers, maga-
zines, and books (Kimura 1992; Maeda 1993 [1973]; see also Silverberg
1993 : 12 3 - 12 4).
White-collar households were willing to spend between 3.3 and 8.7
yen per month on reading material, and many subscribed to more than
one newspaper andlor magazine. An unmarried staff person of a maga-
zine with a monthly income of 60 yen, for example, spent 3.3 yen on
reading material, while the three-person household of a trading com-
pany employee with a monthly income of 150 yen budgeted 7.5 yen for
newspapers, magazines, and other reading material. The rather luxuri-
ous household of a manager with a monthly income of 215 yen could af-
ford to spend 8.7 yen on reading material, including a newspaper, two
women's magazines, a foreign magazine, and other reading material for
the manager, his wife, three children, and a maid (Sarariiman May 1929;
quoted in Nagamine 2001: 225). According to a female reader sur-
vey published in 1926, 77 "modern girls"-including female students,
typists, train conductors, sales clerks, cafe waitresses, actresses, and
nurses-enjoyed reading more than 30 different magazines (Fujokai Oc-
tober 1926; quoted in Nagamine 2001: 110). According to a 1923 sur-
vey on leisure behavior, newspaper and magazine reading had become
Sexology for the Masses 10 3
one of the two favorite leisure activities (the other was book reading) of
the working class (see Nagamine 2001: 164), allowing for the develop-
ment of a "low scientific culture" (Sheets-Pyenson 1985).
In these publications, ranging from general interest newspapers and
magazines to women's and household magazines, readers of all walks
of life found articles by sexologists, advertisements for sexological pub-
lications, and reports on the authors' activities in the realm of sex re-
search, sex education, and sex reform. These print media helped some
individual sexologists attain a more prominent status and contributed
significantly to the dissemination of their ideas. Publishing houses real-
ized that sex helped boost their circulation numbers to new heights and
used it-often packaged as scandal and confession stories-to increase
their commercial success.
Akiyama Yoshio's editorials in Sexuality~ quoted above, informed
readers that young people's "false sexual development" needed to be
guided in a better direction to ensure that" adultery, wild marriages, and
abortions" would soon become practices of the past (Sei October 1927,
editorial). He hoped that a balanced blend of "erotic tales, reports from
experience, narratives and scholarly essays" would enlighten and enter-
tain readers enough so that they would pay the relatively hefty price of
40 sen for one issue. 2o He also offered free public lectures on "sexual
love" (seiai koen) for a minimum of thirty people and encouraged read-
ers to contact him about that possibility (Sei October 1927, editorial).
Founded by Akiyama in 1918, Sexuality was one of the sexological
journals that had survived the Kanta earthquake in 1923 (Sei December
1926, editorial). A typical issue brought together a diverse group of pro-
ponents of sex research and sexual enlightenment. The spring 1920 is-
sue was a special "issue on women's sexual desire" (fujin seiyokugo) and
included articles on the importance of (female) chastity, a comparative
history of prostitution systems, and notes on consanguine marriage by
Sawada Junjira, an immensely prolific writer on sexual issues. The liter-
ary critic Sawada Keiko (Sawada's wife) contributed an article on the
various roles of women in the home and society. Abe Isoo (186 5 -I949),
a graduate of Doshisha University and professor of economics at Wa-
sed a University, expressed in his contributions to the journal his concern
about the impact of work on women's reproductive ability. Abe co-
founded the Social Democratic Party in May 1901 (with Katoku Shiisui,
Katayama Sen, Kinoshita Naoe, and others) and the Social Mass Party
(1932 - 1940) and was an omnipresent public figure throughout the first
half of the twentieth century, coupling scholarly engagement with polit-
ical activism (see Kawamura N. 1990). He also was a cofounder of the

Purity Society (Kakuseikai), which guided the anti-prostitution move-
ment as of July 19I I under the slogan "liberation of prostitutes" (gei-
shogi kaiho) and published the monthly journal Purity. At the beginning
of the I920S, Abe became a leading representative of the Tokyo arm of
the birth control movement-the subject of chapter 4.
Classifying childbirth as one of the most "important factors in hu-
man development," Yokoyama Masao, a statistician from the Census
Bureau (Kokusei Chosa-kyoku), contributed an article to the special
issue of Sexuality in which he presented Japanese women's birth rates
and compared them to birth rates of women in twenty-three other
countries. 21 Based on his experiences as an obstetrician, Akimoto Seiji,
the head of a women's hospital, described the reproductive life cycle of
women in an article entitled "The Sexual Capacity of Japanese Women."
Ozawa Kenji, a medical doctor, declared chastity, women's participation
in the workforce outside the home, and birth control the three most
pressing "sexual problems" of the years to come. Among the other con-
tributors to this special issue of Sexuality were a director of a girls' high
school, a journalist from the newspaper Nagoya Nipp0!1 a "scholar of
race improvement," and a few others whose expertise was not specified
(Sei April 1920).
The collection of comments by more than forty contemporaries on
what Ozawa termed the three "sexual problems concerning women" is
perhaps the most fascinating part of this issue on female sexuality (Sei
April I920: 79-9I). Editor Akiyama and most of the contributors were
members of the Japanese Society of Sexology (Nihon Seigakkai), a small
group based in Tokyo (not to be confused with another organization
with the same name founded in the postwar era and carried by people
with a quite different agenda, to which I shall return in chapter 5). The
list of official supporters of the first Japanese Society of Sexology and the
journal Sexuality was long and included a wide range of men and a few
women. Among them were medical doctors, scientists like Ishikawa Chi-
yomatsu, journalists such as Shimada Saburo, educators, mostly from
teachers' colleges and high schools, and literary critics (Sei April I 9 20:
I54- I 55)
Another Tokyo-based group of sexologists, the Sex Study Society (Sei
no Kenkyukai), under the leadership of Kitano Hiromi, began to pub-
lish Sex Research (Sei no Kenkyu) in December I9I9. The goals of the
group, noted in almost every issue of the journal, were similar to those
of other groups of sexologists: "Our goal is to carry out various kinds
Sexology for the Masses 10 5
of sex research and disseminate all of this knowledge. In order to realize

this goal we will take the following steps: First, we will publish Sex Re-
search. Second, we will publish major Eastern and Western works on
sex. Third, we will collect books and other materials related to sex.
Fourth, we will hold group meetings from time to time. And fifth, we
will act as serious [majime] advisors of people who suffer from various
kinds of sexual problems" (Sei no Kenkyu December 19 19).
The editor of Sex Research strove to attract three kinds of members
to the group: supporters who worked for the group, special supporters
who paid a monthly membership of 50 sen, and regular members who
paid a monthly fee of 25 sen (Sei no Kenkyu December 1919). Like Ya-
mamoto Senji and Yasuda Tokutaro, Kitano was attracted mostly to
Germanic sexology. In the first issue of his journal he briefly reviewed
the history of sexology and mentioned several German, Austrian, and
Swiss sexologists, such as Iwan Bloch, Magnus Hirschfeld, Albert Moll,
Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Auguste Forel, and Albert Eulenburg, and
praised the German sexological journals Journal of Sexology (Zeitschrift
fur Sexualwissenschaft), Sexual Problems (Sexualprobleme), and New
Generation (Neue Generation). Kitano also noted that the existence of
the American Rational Sex Series proved that the necessity for sex re-
search had been acknowledged in the United States as wel1. 22 Claiming
that sex research had gained approval in Japan, he accurately stated that
nonetheless there were still few researchers who actually carried it out
(Kitano 19 1 9: 4).
In the following issues Kitano continued his historiography of West-
ern sexology and introduced a great number of other, mostly European,
authors' works. He chose the Japanese neologism seiyokugaku as the
translation of the German Sexualwissenschaft, and most of the contrib-
utors to his journal focused on what Yamamoto and Yasuda would re-
ject as studies of "abnormal" or "perverse" sexuality (Kitano 1919:4).
This tendency toward the "abnormal" was articulated in special issues
on prostitution and frequent advertisements for books on prostitution
based both on Kitano's ten-plus years of research and Nakamura Ko-
kyo's journal entitled Perverse Psyche (Hentai Shinri).
A writer and medical doctor, Nakamura was engaged in the in-
troduction of psychoanalysis and European psychology to Japan. He
was the chairman of the Japanese Medico-Psychological Society (Nihon
Seishin Igakkai) and in addition served as a criminological advisor to the
Tokyo police. In I9I7 he became the editor of the popular psychiatric
journal Perverse Psyche, to which Kitano also frequently contributed.
I06 Sexology for the Masses
The expertise of most other authors of Sex Research was not identified,
except for those of the gynecologist Habuto Eiji and the amateur Edo
historian Mitamura Engyo.
Sex Research also printed extracts of Sigmund Freud's Three Essays
on the Theory of Sexuality (I962 [I905]:88-126), the chapter on neo-
Malthusianism in Iwan Bloch's Das Sexualleben unserer Zeit~ (I9I9
[I906]:7I 5 -73 0 ), and extracts from several works of other European
sexologists. Despite Kitano's connections to the police, who were in
charge of protecting public peace and morals and were thus in charge of
censorship, Sex Research was censored frequently, and at times entire is-
sues were prohibited from being distributed. 23
A frequent contributor to Sex Research and Kitano's friend, Habuto
Eiji eventually founded his own journal entitled Sexual Desire and Hu-
mankind (Seiyoku to Jinsei) at the beginning of the I920S. Habuto was
a graduate of the Medical Department at the University of Tokyo and
practiced as a gynecologist in a small clinic in the vicinity of theUniver-
sity of Tokyo's campus in Nezu, the playground of many literati and
medical doctors, including Natsume S6seki, Mori Ogai, and Ota Tenrei,
during the early twentieth century. His first main work, entitled Perverse
Sexual Desire (Hentai seiyokuron~ I9I5) and co-authored with Sawada
Junjiro, was based on Richard von Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis
(I886). During the next fifteen years, he wrote numerous popular books
and articles, in which he preached furiously about the pathology of ho-
mosexuality and the mental and physical harmfulness of masturbation.
When he committed suicide in 1929, the author of an obituary in Pop-
ular Medicine noted without a hint of irony that Habuto had died from
the consequences of neurasthenia, which Habuto himself-like many
other contemporaries-had considered a result of masturbation (Yoko-
yama T. 1929). Habuto addressed a wide range of themes in Sexual De-
sire and Humankind. Issues that focused on a particular theme included,
for example, one on sexual love (January 1921), one on systems of pros-
titution (February 1921), an issue on female sexual desire (March I921),
and one on sexual desire in literature and art (April 1921). The pool of
contributors to Sexual Desire and Humankind~ like those to other sex-
ological journals, included medical doctors, journalists, and occasion-
ally university professors and directors of hospitals and health advice
offices. In addition, advertisements for Habuto's numerous popular book
publications filled a considerable number of pages in his journal. His
books also were advertised in other sexological journals and in women's
and popular health magazines.
Sexology for the Masses I07
Sexual Theory (Seiron; see figure 8), published by yet another small
group of sexologists, the Society of Sexual Theory (Seironsha), was of a
slightly different character than Sexuality and Sexual Desire and Hu-
mankind. Besides the dominant Habuto Eiji, contributors included a
few medical doctors and other men and two women with law degrees.
However, the majority of the contributors were not identified by pro-
fession. Like Sexuality, Sex Research, and other sexological journals,
Sexual Theory contained equal portions of sexological information and
supposedly entertaining, sometimes grotesque, stories. In the May I928
issue, for example, the criminal law that declared abortion illegal was
questioned and the laws and the problems involved were discussed in a
factual manner. A certain medical doctor, Kawatani Masao, compared
the legal situation concerning abortion in Japan to that in Russia and
Germany in order to justify and promote a more liberal abortion law.
Another medical doctor described case studies of sexual ailments and
how they had been healed. Among these were the case of a twenty-one-
year-old student at a professional school who had suffered from noc-
turnal emission, that of a thirty-five-year-old electrical technician who
was plagued by premature ejaculation, and that of a forty-seven-year-
old politician who was haunted by impotence.
In contrast to these articles, which evoked the language of social sci-
entific research, Tanaka Chiune, whose expertise was not clarified, told
several versions of the same legend about "perverse marriages" (hentai
kon). One version of the story ran like this: "A certain man lived alone.
He became lonely and eventually played with one of his own pigs. The
pig brought forth many young, all of which looked like humans" (Ta-
naka C. I928:48). In the essay, Tanaka did not draw any conclusions
from these stories, nor did he make any explicit judgments. From his in-
troduction, however, it is clear that he considered Japan and the Japa-
nese to be beyond such "perverse" stories or perhaps even such behav-
ior. At the beginning of his essay, he pointed out that these stories did
not originate in "mainland Japan" but in Taiwan, Korea, China, and In-
dia (Tanaka C. 1928:48).
By 1925, Yamamoto, disillusioned by the unfavorable response to his
efforts to promote education and research on sex and fired from Do-
shisha and Kyoto Universities, had turned to the education of laborers.
As a representative of the Labor Farmer Party he became increasingly
engaged in politics and founded Birth Control Review, which was re-
named Sex and Society after a few issues. Targeting a lay audience rather
than scholars, all texts in Sex and Society were printed with the phonetic
Figure 8. Sexual Theory (Seiron, April 1928) distinguished it-
self from the beginning with its entertaining spoofs of most other
sexological magazines. Erotic stories as well as contributions
on prostitution and questions on abortion were printed.
syllable writing systems hiragana and katakana next to uncommon Chi-

nese characters in order to facilitate legibility, and the journal was sold
at the price of 20 sen-cheaper than any of the women's and general-
interest magazines that cost between 30 and 40 sen (Sanji Chosetsu
Hy6ron 1925a). The texts of Yamamoto's sex education lectures ran
in almost every single issue (i.e., Yamamoto Senji 1925a-P, 1926c,

1927a-d). His translations of sexological works were also a central fea-
ture of the journal.
Ota Tenrei's Research in Sexology (Seikagaku Kenkyii,) was the last
journal founded before the outbreak of full-blown war with China in
1937, when censorship set out to sweep the journals and their authors
into oblivion. I shall examine censorship and other developments de-
structive to the sexological project, including the power of pronatal
propaganda, "racial hygiene," and the tightening of the economic situ-
ation, in chapter 5. Here, I wish to introduce Ota Tenrei (1900-1985)
as one of the medical doctors-cum-sexologists who underwent a trans-
formation from researcher to popularizer of sexological findings. He
also is of particular interest in the colonization of sex as a proponent of
sex education and sex research who continued his activities in the post-
war era, which I will revisit in chapter 5.
Ota graduated from Kyoto Medical University in 1925. He opened
his gynecological practice in a poor neighborhood in Kyoto and was
soon stamped as a "socialist doctor." He spent many years researching
the female cycle in his own laboratory, and eventually developed a new
means of contraception-an intrauterine device (IUD), or "spiral"-
\vhich he introduced in 1932. As he noted in his memoirs, his colleagues
in the medical profession, particularly those from Tokyo, were rather
critical of his invention, which he had described in several articles for
professional journals. At the beginning of the 1930S, it was uncommon
for a respectable physician to engage in the development of contracep-
tive methods. Nevertheless, several hundred doctors based mainly in
Taiwan and Korea tested the Ota-Ring. Because of his research, Ota
was in close contact \\Tith Ishimoto Shizue, Yasuda Tokutaro, Abe Isoo,
and Yamamoto Senji, all leading activists in the birth control movement.
In contrast to other sexologists, Ota did not engage in popularizing his
findings and inventions beyond the boundaries of his own journal and
other scholarly publications. 24
CULTIVATING THE SEXOLOGICAL FIELD
On trains one sees people reading books exclusively

on sexual questions, the psychology of love, and sex
research. Many magazines write continuously about
sexual topics only to capture the curiosity of youth and
to increase the number of copies sold. Nowadays there

are even specialized journals dealing entirely with these
topics.
Fujo Shinbun I9 June I9 2 I
These observations by the editor of the Women's Newspaper (Fujo Shin-

bun) may have been an exaggeration. They hint accurately, however, at
the growing market for publications about sex, which marked the es-
tablishment of a sexology whose aim was to bring scientific knowledge
about sex not only to children and youth but also to the wider public.
To some contemporaries, "sex education" seemed to be the most popu-
lar expression used during the I920S (Hentai Shinri I92I; see also Furu-
kawa I993: II4), and by the I930S, medical reference books for home
use included extensive sections on masturbation, menstruation, preg-
nancy, and recommendations for the treatment of venereal diseases
(Araki I93 I; Arai I934).
All sexological journals began with the goal of increasing the body of
knowledge on sex and distributing this knowledge to a wide audience.
However, these journals differed considerably in how these goals were
pursued and in the means used. Some were scholarly in both style and
language and thus unintelligible for readers with less than higher edu-
cation. Others made an effort to be comprehensible and also attractive
to a less educated readership. However, the contents of the journals and
their authors' professional expertise or lack thereof were not the only
indicators of their scholarliness or popularity. As a rule, the use of furi-
gana next to almost all of the Chinese characters indicated that a broader
audience was targeted. Three-color covers and illustrations were used as
a means to attract an audience beyond scholarly readers.
Most of the sexological journals adhered to the laws applicable to the
commercial print media market, as indicated by the kinds of advertise-
ments found among the pages of the sexological journals, which ranged
from self-advertising announcements to mainstream product advertising
that could be found in any contemporary magazine. The journals adver-
tised for other sexological journals, announced books by their authors,
and printed advertisements for the clinics of those doctors who either
appeared as authors or answered letters in advice columns.
In his journal Perverse Psyche~ Nakamura Kokyo advertised the first
edition of the monthly Sex Research, published by Kitano Hiromi (Hen-
tai Shinri April I920: back cover). The advertisement, printed in nearly
all of the subsequent issues, explicitly recommended it as reading in the
Sexology for the Masses III
"psychology of love" (ren' ai shinri) for educators, theologians, literary

scholars, teachers, and parents, and thereby all people who were en-
trusted with raising children. The publishers and authors attempted to
publicize not only their own research results, but also the names and
work of "other great scientists" in the field (Sei no Kenkyu April I92I:
inside cover). Sexuality printed full-page advertisements for the works
Sexual Hygiene and Prevention (Seiteki eisei oyobi yobo) and Pathology
of Sexual Desire (Shikij6kyo)~ both written by Sawada Junjiro, who was
characterized as the authority on sexology (Sei February 1923: adver-
tising section). In the case of Sexual Desire and Humankind (Seiyoku to
Jinsei)~ the great number of personal letters that Habuto Eiji received
motivated him to set up an advice column in his journal. Most of the
sexological journals also contained tear-out forms that could be filled in
and sent to the journal's editorial offices. The content of the advice col-
umns, with titles like" Solutions to Sexual Agony" (" Seiteki hanmon kai-
ketsusho") in Sexual Desire and Humankind or "Questions and Answers
on Hygiene" ("Eisei mondo") in Popular Medicine~ echoed the issues
that were discussed in the journal's articles. They offered the counselor
the possibility of giving concrete instructions for concrete problems in
the form of a staged dialogue. By the end of the I920S, sexuality had be-
come the crucial subject of a choreographed communication between
readers and experts in both sexological journals and other magazines. 25
Next to self-promoting announcements, advertisements for medical
and hygiene treatments and devices were most common. The first issue
of Birth Control Review~ for example, praised a great variety of products
ranging from an anti-tobacco addiction medicine, to a skin tonic named
Beautiful Face Water (Bigansui) that promised to remove pimples, to bis-
cuits containing calcium (Sanji Chosetsu Hy6ron February 1925). In
later issues, advertisements for German medical treatments were added.
A cream named Sana Geox supposedly killed vaginal and urethral bac-
teria (Sanji Chosetsu Hyoron March 1925, April 1925). Supiiman,
available in two varieties, one especially for gonorrhea patients, was
praised as a suppository "approved by the German government" and
served the same purpose (Sanji Chosetsu Hyoron April 1925, Tsuzoku
Igaku May 1926). Even Sex Research advertised medical treatment for
venereal diseases, although no other aesthetic means were used to make
the journal more appealing to non-professional readers (Sei no Kenkyu
April 1919). A pharmacy advertisement claimed that Menze Suponchi,
made of silk, would prevent venereal disease during menstruation and
announced that condoms made of fish skin were available at the same
pharmacy (Sanji Chosetsu Hyoron June 1925). However, some journals,

such as Sex and Society~ also printed full-page advertisements for the
major department stores Mitsukoshi, Daimaru, and Takashimaya, ad-
vertisements which could be found in other magazines and newspapers
and thus perhaps added to the respectability of the sexology journals.
Intellectuals involved in the social reform movements of the 1920S
were wary of institutions, which were available only to a small circle of
the intellectual elite. In an effort to reach the general public they voiced
their ideas and theories in media that were available through mail order
and from publishing houses and, after 1925, on the radio (Marshall
1992: 95; Silverberg 199 8 : 33 ).26 The widespread use of magazines and
newspapers was one of the most important strategies sexologists and
other Taisho intellectuals used to increase their visibility and introduce
their ideas to a wider audience. Whereas earlier proponents and oppo-
nents of diverse policies published their views primarily in scholarly
journals that were accessible and intelligible to only a small circle of
readers, the intellectuals of the Taisho era took advantage of the rapidly
developing popular media market. Now, the views of university profes-
sors and other intellectuals were published by widespread media, espe-
cially when those views deviated from common sense (Marshall 1992:
95-97). Thus, knowledge and the means of exchanging information
across great distances were no longer the exclusive possessions of a small
elite but gradually became the property of a large number of educated
citizens.
Sexologists might have had much less success at creating their field,
and the influence of their ideas and theories might not have been so
great, if not for their presence in women's magazines, general-readership
magazines, and newspapers, which attracted a larger readership than
any of the sexological journals ever could have. Crucial for these activ-
ities were specialized journals such as Purity and popular health jour-
nals such as Popular Medicine and Popular Hygiene (Tsuzoku Eisei).
Equally important was the support of other papers, especially the Asahi
Shinbun~ women's magazines like Women's Review (Fujin Koron)~ gen-
eral mass-circulation magazines such as The Sun (Taiyo)~ and popular
psychiatric and criminal-psychological journals such as Perverse Psyche.
All of these contributed to intensifying sexual discourse and furthered
the multiplication of sexological writings by offering sexologists the op-
portunity to voice their concerns, present their knowledge, and adver-
tise their more specialized publications.
In one of many examples in general-interest magazines, The Sun ad-
vertised a book edited by a medical doctor entitled Sexual Problems

(Seiyoku mondai). In nine chapters, the "scientifically based results of
several years of research" on the" sexual desire in humans, society, mar-
riage, love, literature, morals, religion, education, and hygiene" were
presented to a wide audience. The advertisement promised that "fleshy
words" had been avoided and praised the book as mandatory read-
ing for all who" dealt directly with children" and therefore "with the de-
velopment of the race." These readers were specified as educators,
theologians, business people, parents, and siblings (Taiyo 3 September
1913: advertising section).
The almost symbiotic relationship of the sexologists to the more pro-
gressive print media was instrumental for the successful establishment of
sexological journals that contained articles on sexual hygiene, pathol-
ogy and the history of sexual life, educational series, erotic stories, and
advice columns. Japanese sexologists, like their European colleagues,
found letters to the editors to be an important instrument for legitimiz-
ing their science and themselves as authorities on sexual issues. In Aus-
tria, Richard von Krafft-Ebing had encouraged homosexuals to tell him
their stories, which had led to a flood of letters. He took most of the bi-
ographical contributions in his work Psychopathia sexualis from these
letters (Hauser 1994:211). Similarly, Sawada Junjiro's 1922 treatise
"Actual Contraception and the Possibilities of Limiting Births" ("Jissai-
teki hinin to sanji seigenho") contained a tear-out sheet for readers'
questions. He personally answered more than 350 questions each year
after the publication of his first book in 1918, which addressed female
hygiene before, during, and after pregnancy (Kawamura K. 1996: 152).
In the same issue, the Chiio Yakuin Pharmacy promised free delivery
of a brochure providing information on sexual neurasthenia, unsat-
isfactory genital development and functional impairments, uterine
and venereal diseases, as well as menstrual complaints-and pimples,
freckles, and tuberculosis (Taiyo 3 September 1913: advertisement sec-
tion). Women's Review printed detailed advertisements for Habuto Eiji's
book Sexual Hygiene (Sei no eisei)., on sale for 1.70 yen, which was
about "youth and sexual neurasthenia, masturbation among girls and
boys, ejaculation and impotence, methods to satisfy sexual desire, sex-
ual hygiene for newlyweds, venereal diseases, and more." Habuto's older
works-General Sexology (Ippan seiyokugaku)., Studies on Feminin-
ity (Fujinsei no kenkyu)., and Sexual Desire and Modern Currents of
Thought {Seiyoku to kindai shicho}-were advertised constantly in
women's magazines, and some had appeared in their fifteenth edition by
II4 Sexology for the Masses
as early as I92I. Women's magazines like The Housewife's Companion

(Shufu no Torno) and Women's Review (Fujin Koron) also sent their
subscribers medical reference books and household hygiene manuals
that contained large sections on sex and sexuality.
Many scholars from various disciplines, employees in health and
police departments, women's rights activists, and journalists whose
work was widely advertised and whose ideas were debated in broaden-
ing circles of educated readers wrote in several of these journals and
magazines themselves. Yamamoto, for example, promoted sex educa-
tion and research in his own magazine Sex and Society, as well as in Per-
verse Psyche and Popular Medicine. Habuto saw himself as a defender
of normalcy and as such wrote contributions for Sexual Theory, Popu-
lar Medicine, and Women's Review, in addition to his own magazine. At
the end of the I920S he turned toward a mass audience and wrote in-
numerable sex advice books. Abe Isoo promoted his ideas on prostitu-
tion, birth control, and eugenics in Purity, Women's Review, Perverse
Psyche, and Popular Medicine.
Sexologists employed a number of strategies to promote their goal
of establishing a new field of research and education. One set of these
strategies involved careful definition of the boundaries of what they
claimed as their field. Sexologists frequently distanced themselves from
women's magazines but they never attacked the more sophisticated
"high-class women's magazines" (kokyu fujin zasshi), such as Women's
Review or Women's Newspaper, which were read almost as frequently
by men as by women of the educated classes. Rather, they criticized ri-
val illustrated magazines whose popularity, in their opinion, was based
mostly on confession stories. Sexologists may have envied these maga-
zines for their commercial success but they made a point of differentiat-
ing their journals from them. They shook their heads over article titles
such as "My Confession: I Threw Myself Away to a Murderer," or "My
Confession: I Became the Slave of a Lady-killer," which may have helped
increase these papers' circulation. Sexologists frequently accused print
media of dishonest motives when they reported on sex scandals or when
authors they considered incompetent voiced their views, but they wrote
articles on sexual issues for the very same magazines in order to reach
the greatest possible audience. Although they invited a variety of people
to contribute to their sexological journals, they sometimes devalued au-
thors' articles by remarking that they disagreed with their views.
The public attention directed at sexual issues also drew in other so-
cial reformers who, for various reasons, became involved in an ever
Sexology for the Masses lIS
more con1plex series of debates that colonized more and more social
problems, drawing them under the umbrella of the sexual issue. The de-
bates about sex research and sex education, prostitution and venereal
disease, masturbation and homosexuality continued, but another mat-
ter best exemplified the willingness of various groups within Japanese
society to put research results into practice and turn visions into legal
measures: birth control, the subject of the next chapter.
CHAPTER 4
Claiming the Fetus
In the April 1935 issue of Popular Medicine (Tsuzoku Igaku), a half-

page advertisement offered a total of thirty-six different products for
contraception and the prevention of infection with venereal disease (see
figure 9). Ranging from several categories of "condoms for men and
women" (danjo sakku) to pessaries, silk sponges, and disinfectant
creams, these products were marketed toward both sexes as "tools of
birth control" (sanji seigen yi5gu), "specialized rare articles and medi-
cine for men and women" (danjo senyo chinki chinryaku), and "friends
of familial harmony" (katei wagi5 no tomo). An illustration in the upper
middle part of the advertisement hinted at the pharmacy's potential
clientele. A man dressed in a modern business suit is taking off his shoes
at the entrance to what seems to be his own house. A traditionally
dressed woman greets her husband upon his return from work, request-
ing that he use the condoms she gives to him. The wife says, "I bought
something that will make you blush. Please use it." "Yes, yes," replies
the husband (Tsuzoku Igaku April 1935: 175).
It is not entirely clear whether she wants her husband to use the con-
doms with her and expects him to blush because of the suggestive nature
of such a gesture, whether she assumes that he will have sex with some-
body else and she expects him to blush because of the embarrassment of
acknowledging that. In any case, the subject of their conversation is
birth control-cum-prevention of venereal disease, as some of the prod-
II6
Claiming the Fetus 117
Figure 9. Advertisements for birth control devices placed next to articles for
the prevention of (venereal) diseases hint at their availability even during the
late 1930S, when, in the name of pronatalism and militarism, attempts at limit-
ing family size were persistently denounced and criminalized (Tsuzoku Igaku
April 1935: 175). Used with the kind permission of the Kyoto Ika Daigaku
Library.
uets advertised were intended for birth control, others for the prevention
of an infection with a venereal disease, and yet others for both.
Three condoms were advertised for the price of 1 to 3 yen, depending
on their quality; a pessary for 1.50 yen. The price of other products
ranged between 1 and 3 yen. Customers in mainland Japan could order
any of these products by mail from a pharmacy in Osaka for an addi-
tional fee of 10 sen. From other places under Japan's colonial rule, one
could order them for four times that price. The advertisement texts also
emphasized that the products were safe to use. As the illustration in the
advertisement indicates, most of the contraceptives featured were not af-
fordable to the working class, farmers, or even the less well off middle
class. The illustration also accurately underlines the well-established
conviction that women were responsible for hygiene and health matters
in the home and-by implication-for matters concerning the domes-
tication of sex.
118 Claiming the Fetus
In several other respects, however, the advertisement is surprising.

First, by 1935, attempts at birth control by healthy, well-off couples ran
counter to pronatalist national policies that aimed at increasing the
number of births and shunned attempts at limiting them. Second, the use
of devices like the contraceptive needle (hinin pin) featured in the ad-
vertisement was illegal. And third, the journal Popular Medicine~ like
other journals and magazines that addressed issues of sex and procre-
ation, had been frequently censored over the previous ten years for tak-
ing a pro-birth control stance. By intertwining the purposes of disease
prevention and contra-ception, the creators of the advertisement skill-
fully subscribed to the health regime's goals and at the same time incor-
porated means of birth control, perhaps the most contested issue at the
crossroads of debate about the creation and popularization of sexual
knowledge, social order, women's rights, and empire building.
In contrast to the debate about the "sexual issue" that had taken
place in the Yomiuri Shinbun seventeen years earlier, Japan's birth con-
trol movement and the public controversies that accompanied it did not
involve a relatively homogeneous set of participating doctors and peda-
gogues, but were staged in highly heterogeneous forums and were char-
acterized by great complexity. All participants progressively shaped the
movement, albeit to varying degrees. By engaging in the movement, they
defined its contested content and brought in several "worlds of rele-
vance" (Limoges I993) that unfolded in the space the controversy began
to claim. 1 In this process, as sexual issues seeped into ever broader pub-
lic realms, debates and controversies gradually drifted away from the
seemingly disinterested utterances of claims to the truth about sex-at-
tempted by the early sex researchers described in chapter 3 -and to-
ward decisions about lawmaking, for reasons made urgent by a combi-
nation of economic and political crises as well as imperialist ambitions.
In the early I930S, the total population of mainland Japan had
reached 67 million. 2 The educated classes were convinced that an in-
crease in national prosperity alone, vigorously advocated since the early
days of the Meiji era, would no longer suffice to contain the enormous
annual population growth ofone million inhabitants (BSOPM 1980:
11-13). The rapid population growth of 15 in I,OOO per year was per-
ceived to be a national problem. Throughout the early decades of the
twentieth century this growth was framed as a set of issues that ad-
dressed sexual knowledge and practice in diverse ways. For imperialist
and militarist ideologues, the population increase was proof of a pros-
perous empire, potent and willing to fight future wars not only thanks
to healthy and well-trained male subjects, but also to a supply of off-

spring provided by unlimitedly fertile women. As a way to deal fruitfully
with overpopulation, they proposed emigration into Japan's colonies
and other neighboring Asian countries, which also further facilitated
imperialistic goals. Tens of thousands of Japanese realized that the op-
tions for domestic avenues of advance were shrinking, and they came
to see emigration as a way to seek their fortune elsewhere. "Go! Go
abroad! Abroad! Go!" exhorted one writer in 19 I I, when Korea, in par-
ticular, was the place to go (see Duus 1995:321). Even popular songs
addressed the waves of emigration resulting from the "population prob-
lem" (jinko mondai)~ with lines such as "Because I go, you go too. Away
from crowded Japan. Beyond the sea lies China" (see Miyamoto 1965:
43). Leading ideologues began to welcome rapid population growth
propagated by popular slogans such as "give birth and multiply"
(umeyo~ (uyaseyo) in order to spur Japanese migration and somehow to
"naturally facilitate Japan's expansion into East Asia" (Hashimoto Kin-
goro, reprinted in Tsunoda, de Bary, and Keene 1964:289).3
For certain women's groups, the population problem provided a set-
ting for the redefinition of women's roles, status, and rights in society.
They realized the political capital of their wombs, the expansive part
of their bodies that would-if fully functional-improve their status
as imperial subjects and by the same token further the expansion of
the empire. As I will discuss below, there was by no means unity among
feminists, members of other women's groups, and social reformers on
this point, but many came to believe that one could not be had without
achieving the other. At a time when women were refused political rights,
the idea of lending their bodies to larger political goals and thus align-
ing the uterus with the empire was too alluring. Some feminists believed
in the virtue and power of women's sexual self-discipline and morals in
order to both curb overpopulation and improve men's moral standards
and, by implication, the moral state of society. Others declared that pre-
venting or terminating a pregnancy was a woman's exclusive right and
the decision to do so should rest with her alone.
Emphasizing the ignorance of female farmers and workers as well as
the hardships of their lives, socialists demanded the legalization of abor-
tive and contraceptive means of birth control, particularly for peasants
and workers. They viewed the population growth rate as worrisome and
a precursor to class and international conflict. Socialists also rejected Ja-
pan's emigration policies as bourgeois and declared imperialism and war
their most probable implications (Kato T. 1925b; Katsura 1926; Sugi-
yama M. 1925; Taniguchi 1925; Yoshida S. 1925). Some of them joined

sexologists in their rejection of the conventional view that sex was inev-
itably guided by and restricted to the goal of procreation, and they pro-
moted research and education on matters of conception and pregnancy.
In their efforts to popularize sexual knowledge, sexologists allied
themselves with women's groups, socialists, and other social reformers.
Advocating sexual enlightenment and reform of the laws concerning
pregnancy, birth, abortion, and contraception, they founded the Tokyo-
based Japanese Birth Control Study Society in 1922 and the Osaka Birth
Control Study Society in 1923. These two groups successfully sought
allies among a wide range of social groups, including tenant and labor
unions, several units of the health administration, and the police and
the legislative body of the Japanese government. Throughout the 1920S,
however, friction within the birth control movement prevented it from
becoming an effective political force. When representatives from both
groups eventually managed to write up petitions for the legalization of
birth control in 1929 and 1932, the radical demands voiced during the
early 1920S had long since been eliminated.
INVENTING "CHILD MURDER"
During the early Meiji era, a series of regulations that gradually crimi-
nalized abortion, infanticide, and eventually every other means of birth
control marked an incremental break with policies and attitudes toward
conception, pregnancy, and abortion in Tokugawa Japan when, accord-
ing to sex researcher Tanaka Koichi (1927), "nobody had thought of
abortion as reprehensible." In premodern Japan, infanticide had been
associated with the Buddhist doctrine of the transmigration of souls,
according to which infants under the age of seven belonged to the gods.
Infanticide therefore was not homicide but an act that returned the
child to the other world. Moreover, because the first four months were
not clearly included in the concept of pregnancy, abortions in the early
months were not perceived of as such. Abortions were permitted in an
advanced state of pregnancy as well, however, and abortion (datai) and
infanticide (mabiki) were commonly thought of as one concept (Ochiai
1999 a - b ).
In 1868, the central government decreed the first nationwide Law
Regulating the Sale of Drugs and the Practice of Abortion Techniques by
Midwives (Sanba no baiyaku sewa oyobi dataito no torishimari ho). In
Claiming the Fetus I2I
1880, the "crime of abortion" (datai no tsumi) was established in the

new criminal laws and was carried over unchanged as Articles 212 to
2 16 of the new Criminal Code, which was enacted in 197. Several other
regulations were later implemented, including the Ordinance Regulating
Harmful Contraceptive Devices (Yugai hininyo kigu torishimari kisoku)
in 1930 and its amended version in 1936.
According to Article 212, a pregnant woman who had procured an
abortion would be punished with imprisonment of up to one year. A per-
son who was not a medical or health professional and who performed
an abortion for a pregnant woman at her request was considered a co-
offender and punished with penal servitude of up to two years. If the
woman was killed or injured as a result of the abortion, imprisonment
could be extended to five years (Article 2 13; see Sebald I9 3 6 : 165 - I 66;
Sei to Shakai October I925:25). Physicians, midwives, chemists, and
druggists who performed an abortion with a pregnant woman's consent
risked imprisonment of up to five years. If the woman was injured or
killed, they awaited imprisonment of up to seven years (Article 214; see
Sebald I936: I66 -I67).
With the implementation of the Midwife Regulations (Sanba kisoku)
in I899, midwives and doctors who had commonly performed abor-
tions were replaced by a younger generation of doctors and midwives
trained in Western medicine. The government began to strictly control
the use of drugs and obstetric devices, organized rural midwives into as-
sociations, and subjected them to official supervision. Another powerful
means of curbing abortion was the control of harmful drugs. Vaginal
suppositories also became more difficult to obtain. Finally, it became the
responsibility of mid\vives to notify the police of miscarriages or still-
births 'that occurred after the third month of pregnancy. Within the new
medical system that made the police not only the guardians of public or-
der but also the supervisors of health and hygiene, pregnant women who
were beyond their first trimester were subj ected to police surveillance
(Tama I994:7; see also Steger 1994). A fisherwoman from Kyushu re-
called a related incident from her youth: "In my grandmother's days [to-
ward the end of the nineteenth century] there were fewer children per
family, on average, because the women practiced infanticide and carried
out abortions on themselves. My mother heard of a woman who, after
killing her baby, was immediately interrogated by the police. For this
reason, my mother decided not to kill her last born, my little sister" (see
Bernstein 1976: 29-3 I).
Despite the harsh punishment for abortions and the increasing num-
ber of regulations controlling abortifacients and those in health profes-
sions, thousands of women put themselves at risk and somehow man-
aged to have back-alley abortions . Fujikawa Yii noted that in 1919, for
example, more than 600 women per year were subject to punishment
for illegal abortions (Fujikawa Y. I9I9c).4
The punishment for perpetrators of infanticide was potentially more
severe. The cases of "child murderers" documented by the Ministry of
Justice showed that they were usually first offenders between eighteen
and twenty-five years of age. Annual crime rates showed a female perpe-
trator share of less than 10 percent in all categories of crime. The share
of women in the "homicide" category, however, was significantly higher
(17 percent of all homicides in 1925), and statistics were reversed in the
"child homicide" category, with 90 percent of the recorded homicides
committed by women (Nihon teikoku shihosho 1925: 362 - 387).5 The
two motives most commonly cited by female offenders were "specific
events" and "poverty" (Nihon teikoku shihosho 1925:362-387; Fuwa
1933 : 275) Considering that for other cases of homicide the Criminal
Code foresaw the death penalty, a life sentence, or, at the very least,
three to fifteen years' imprisonment, the prison sentences of one to two
years for infanticide were relatively short and perhaps can be under-
stood as an indication that despite the introduction of modern views on
reproductive health, in legal practice more traditional views of human
life persisted. However, both laws and legal practice came under fire
when representatives of progressive currents demanded the liberation
not only of the female sex but of sexual practice altogether.
RECLAIMING THE FETUS
The "woman problem" debate of 1910 brought forth divergent argu-

ments about how women should respond to the "population problem,"
the role and ideology of motherhood, and women's social status vis-a-
vis men. Feminists ranging from maternity ideologues Hiratsuka Raicho
and Yamada Waka to socialist Yamakawa Kikue voiced their views
about women's sexual desire and motherhood. In this debate, some fem-
inists envisaged abortive and contraceptive means of birth control as
tools for the liberation of women; others saw them as instruments of pa-
triarchal oppression. Still others suggested women should utilize their
uterus as a politically potent organ. The uterus and women's ability
Claiming the Fetus I23
to conceive and bear children became a tool not only for taming and
morally improving men but also-within the framework of imperialist
pronatal body politics-the chief instrument for furthering the empire.
For lack of effective and affordable means of birth control, "the lim-
itation of births" (sanji seigen) initially was debated primarily in terms
of the right to terminate a pregnancy (ninshin chusetsu no jiyu)-, and only
in a few instances in terms of contraception. In the June 1915 issue of
the feminist periodical Bluestocking (Seito) -' Yasuda Satsuki claimed
the right to abortion by maintaining that the fetus was part of the
woman's body. Ignoring the limited availability of safe and legal abor-
tions, Yasuda stated that it was purely a woman's own decision whether
she chose to carry a fetus or to terminate the pregnancy. She told the
readers of Bluestocking to follow their own dictates, even in violation of
the law, and counseled women to have abortions if motherhood was go-
ing to be difficult (Yasuda S. 1915; see also Sievers 1983: 183-184).
The "problem of birth control" (sanji seigen no mondai) came up fre-
quently at the meetings of "new women" and began to preoccupy many
of them, including Okada Sachiko, the poet Yosano Akiko, and Hir-
atsuka Raicho. Referring to Malthusian theories, Okada Sachiko ar-
gued that according to modern morals, to indulge in sexual intercourse
and reproduce in an uncontrolled manner was one of the most serious
crimes. Speaking of her own experience as a mother of ten, Yosano
Akiko also felt that parents did no service to their children if they had
too many and could not provide for their basic needs and proper edu-
cation (see Hiratsuka 1983 [1916]:238).
Hiratsuka Raicho, a Japan Women's College graduate, prominent
feminist, and cofounder of Bluestocking-, propagated contraceptive
methods and the legalization of abortion from the perspective of a "good
wife and wise mother" (ryosai kenbo). In her view, unlimited reproduc-
tion out of "instinctual love" (honnoteki ai) was a crime against the
responsibility of parents to provide for their offspring's livelihood and
happiness and to secure the "future of the race" (shuzoku no shorai). In
contrast to Western countries such as France, Sweden, Russia, Germany,
the United States, and England, Hiratsuka pointed out, Japan's birth rate
was not yet falling and the mortality rate among infants continued to re-
main high (Hiratsuka I983 [I916]:242). Almost a year later, in another
article on contraceptive methods, Hiratsuka further explicated her views
on the population problem. She suggested diversifying the debate on
contraception and declared it a public issue that needed to be tackled
I24 Claiming the Fetus
from the perspective of the "woman's problem," examined as an eco-

nomic problem, and analyzed from the viewpoint of "improvement of
the race" (shuzoku kairyo).
On the one hand, Hiratsuka opposed the view, held by more conser-
vative public women, that contraception was "unnatural" and should
thus remain branded as an intolerable practice. On the other hand, she
remained unconvinced that women should-due to their individual
professions and their public life as scholars, writers, novelists, or musi-
cians-be able to avoid pregnancy, as suggested by Yosano Akiko. Invit-
ing the state's interference in reproductive matters, Hiratsuka wrote that
the "poor and ignorant lower classes" had no sense of responsibility and
thus gave birth to countless children who would in turn also be poor and
ignorant and, in the worst cases, spread "criminal seeds" (zaiaku no
shushi). The Japanese state, as Hiratsuka saw it, had no working policy
in place to prevent alcoholics, epileptics, victims of leprosy, syphilitics,
and the insane from reproducing. Thus, for the sake of children, the ma-
turing of the race, and the development of the state and society, she
argued, children should be more highly cherished (Hiratsuka 1983
[1916]:337 and I9I8).
Criticizing Hiratsuka's stance onb-irth control as bourgeois, socialist
feminist Yamakawa Kikue pointed out the gap between rich and poor
women. She held that birth control would be the individual woman's
only solution to poverty until the bigger social problem, capitalism, was
resolved. In contrast to Hiratsuka's appeal to simply value children more
highly, Yamakawa encouraged working-class women to refrain from
having children altogether until they actually could be worshipped-as
Hiratsuka had demanded-and provided with the best of lives. Raving
against the bourgeois concern of how birth control should best be ad-
ministered were it to be made available to proletarian women at all, she
pointed out that the struggle of proletarian women was to direct the
wealth they produced back toward themselves. For them, birth control
was one important means of reaching this goal. Yamakawa urged her fe-
male comrades at the forefront of the proletarian movement, just like ac-
tivist proletarian women in the West, to remain single and childless (Ya-
makawa I925: 19- 21 ).
Unimpressed by criticism, from Yamakawa and other socialists, of
her class-biased position, Hiratsuka became the fiercest propagator of
the advantages of bringing fewer children into the world and providing
a better upbringing for them (sukunaku umite oku kyoiku seyo)~ rather
than accepting the current birth and infant mortality rates. She urged
Claiming the Fetus 12 5
her readers to be aware that giving birth to children who were unable to
live ordinary lives was a great crime against society and the Japanese
race, and she demanded that rather than increasing the number of chil-
dren, more emphasis should be put on the quality of their lives (Hirat-
suka 1983 [19 I 6]: 337). She too directed the attention of readers toward
birth control movements in "civilized countries" (bunmeikoku)~ which
were informed by ideas of race improvement, eugenics, and other new
knowledge, and led by eugenicists, physicians, social reformers, and
other propagators of new morals. Enthused as she was about the poten-
tial of birth control for social reform and improvement, she nonetheless
remained concerned about the dissemination of methods and thoughts
on birth control in Japan. By no means, she insisted, should they serve
as devices to enable people to disregard their childbearing responsibili-
ties and indulge in sex merely for their own pleasure. Instead, women
should strive to raise the "public value" (koteki na kachi) of reproduc-
tion, contribute to the improvement of the social status of women as
mothers, and strengthen the voice of women in population policy (Hi-
ratsuka 19 8 3 [19 I 6]: 33 6 - 337).
Hiratsuka and many male and fen1ale contemporaries believed that a
"deep wish to have children" was at the root of women's sexual desire
(see also Sakai 1924a-b, 1925a-g, 1926a-g). Given this conviction, it
is not surprising that Hiratsuka found temporary abstinence and coitus
interruptus~ which she saw as the" control and training of 1nen's sexual
desire" (emphasis added), as the only tolerable birth control methods.
In her vie,v, women were meant to discipline themselves sexually as
"chaste wives" in order to differentiate themselves from mistresses and
prostitutes, at least in the eyes of men. By irresponsibly indulging in
purely physical sexual pleasures, Hiratsuka warned, women risked their
husbands' respect, and in turn husbands might consider them to be
merely one of the two vices most COlllmon to n1en and most disruptive
of an ideal society: alcohol and women (sake to onna) (Hiratsuka 1983
[19 I 6]: 339). Maintaining a belief in the capacity of human beings to
tame their desires, Hiratsuka encouraged women to "pull up their hus-
bands to their own high level of love." If they did so, limiting the num-
ber of children would come about in a morally adequate and natural
manner. Hiratsuka \vas aware how difficult it would be for women
to achieve this goal alone. Hence in one of her Bluestocking essays she
again appealed to the Japanese government to implement a law that
would prohibit "certain types of individuals" from marrying and force
sterilization on them (Hiratsuka 1983 [1916]:340; see also Chiima
1921; Josei Domei 1921; Garon 1993a). I shall revisit this thread in
chapter 5; here I wish to examine other feminists' attempts at politiciz-
ing the uterus.
Yamada Waka, another maternity ideologist, welcomed Hiratsuka's
demands for government protection for mothers and children but vig-
orously disagreed with her on birth control matters. One of the most
prominent maternity ideologues of the Taish6 and early Sh6wa eras, Ya-
mada pointed out in her tirade against birth control that "nature" had
always taken care of population problems, either by epidemic or by war
(Yamada 1922:379).6 In 1922, Yamada wrote at length about her posi-
tion on birth control and contraception in The Social Significance of the
Family (Katei no shakaiteki igi). Propaganda for birth control and con-
traception, she noted, hindered the "psychological growth" that en-
abled men and women to become responsible partners and parents. She
maintained that birth control underlined and legitimated the animalistic
side of humans and ignored the necessity of using the mind to control
sexual desire (Yamada 1922:373). Like Hiratsuka, Yamada was con-
cerned that the legalization of birth control and contraception would
make the free and uncontrolled satisfaction of (male) sexual desire seem
acceptable and would undermine the importance of "psychological
love" (seishinteki ai), which she and most of her contemporaries typi-
cally associated with women's emotional apparatus. As men lacked a
sense of responsibility, in her opinion, the legalization of birth control
and contraception would enable them to indulge in their sexual desire
at the cost of women's psychological love (Yamada 1922 : 374).
That this psychological love that Yamada exclusively attributed to
women could be enhanced by sexual pleasure was unimaginable for Ya-
mada. For her, birth control could not possibly entail the liberation of
women from the burdens of bearing one child after another, as Yama-
kawa insisted, but would turn them into victims trapped by uncon-
trolled male desire once sexual intercourse lost the inevitable outcome
of pregnancy_ Here, Yamada reiterated the convictions of Meiji health
administrators, according to whom men were essentially driven by their
desires. To wives, she ascribed the noble role of taming their husbands
with love and persistence. Taking one's fate into one's own hands was
not on Yamada's agenda, and she doubted that other women felt like do-
ing that either.
Yamada acknowledged that there were unhappy women who suffered
from lack of love in their relationships. She also admitted that there
might be plenty of women who would rather not have children but
Claiming the Fetus
had no choice. In her view, however, the legalization of birth control

would lead to a four-, five-, or even tenfold increase in the number of
these women. Moreover, she insisted that the number of women in Ja-
pan striving for equality with men was by no means the majority. Ya-
mada opposed the birth control activists' dictum that it was better for
the woman in question, her fa lui ly, and the state to have fewer and
healthier children than to have many weak ones who would die early.
Even Hiratsuka's preoccupation with the quality of the race could not
win Yamada's agreement. The main problem of the day, she wrote, was
not the quality of children but the quality of parents. Oblivious to the
economic hardships of the underprivileged classes, Yamada insisted that
parents who were able to raise two or three children properly would be
able to raise seven or eight. If the parents were not good parents, hovv-
ever, it did not matter how many children they had (Yamada 19 22 : 375;
see also Yalnada 1915, 19 I 9a - c). In 1922, when activists for birth
control and contraception first began to organize, Yamada declared that
birth control propaganda must be suppressed because it was an instru-
ment that undern1ined humanity and a tool of "racial suicide" (jinshu-
teki jissatsu) (Yamada 19 22 : 38 I).
Despite Yamada's knowledge of the heartbreaking situations in which
women frequently found themselves, she remained adamant in her po-
sition when she began to serve as a counselor for a woman's column in
the Tokyo Asahi Shinbun roughly ten years later. On 31 March 1932,
Yamada appealed to a woman who had become pregnant as a conse-
quence of rape that she must by all means bear the child because women
were "the pillars for the continuation of the race" (see Ishizaki 1992:
102-103). Published in the newspaper, her advice set off a storm of in-
dignation among her contemporaries. Prominent liberal democrat Yo-
shino Sakuzo used the opportunity to question the abortion law. "La\vs
that do not make people happy," he suggested, "lack authority. It is nec-
essary to abandon laws that punish people and instead create laws that
make them happy" (quoted in Ishizaki 1992: 103). The medical doctor
Kawasaki Natsu was similarly appalled by Yamada's position: "This
young woman must by all means have an abortion. Regardless of her
condition, considering today's unemployment, an abortion is safer and
better for a woman than the hardship of an unwanted pregnancy carried
to term because of this law.... The legislation of abortion must be re-
considered" (quoted in Ishizaki 1992: 103).7
When Yamada's letter appeared in the column, propagators of the le-
galization of birth control were about to lose their fight, and the inva-
sion of Manchuria had proved their worst fears to be accurate-that

"overpopulation" and the criminalized status of abortion and contra-
ceptives would bring about war.
PREVIEWING WAR
Most birth control advocates in Japan, who were commonly associated

with various farm and labor unions, agreed that the country's rapid
population growth harbored many dangers for social and international
peace (Abe 1927a; Oguri 1926). In 1925, Kagawa Toyohiko, founder of
the Salvation Army and cofounder of the Japanese Farmers' Union,
which aimed at the coordination of tenant protests and the improvement
of the welfare and status of farmers, suggested that "scientific birth con-
trol" (kagakuteki sanji chosetsu) was the only means of preventing war.
He maintained that wars often had been caused by economic circum-
stances, which in turn had been brought about by a "population prob-
lem." A common solution advocated by the Japanese state was the
search for new territories that could be exploited and for markets
opened by emigrating populations. These activities, he warned, would
inevitably provoke a war (Kagawa 19 2 5: 34).
It was perhaps this scenario more than any other that made some sex-
ologists put their attempts at establishing sexology as a field of research
and teaching on the back burner and join forces with socialists, pacifists,
and feminists-among whom were midwives, doctors, pharmacists,
university professors, teachers, farmers, workers, and bureaucrats. They
brought forth various arguments for the legalization of birth control and
abortion whose political implications ranged from the pacifist utiliza-
tion of birth control means to curb the population problem to eugenic
motives for improving the quality of the imperial body. In this way, both
pronatalists and birth control activists linked the individual female
body- and more precisely, the functionality of the uterus-to the em-
pire. Some activists set their claims for sexual enlightenment and liber-
ation in opposition to Japan's increasing militarism and imperialism.
Most radically, they promoted a liberation of sex from its ties to repro-
duction, of the working class from poverty, and of women from their
roles as childbearing machines and from the pronatalism that deprived
them and their families of all means of controlling family size. These
new configurations of birth control advocates also revisited the argu-
ments that had been brought forward by the participants in the "wom-
an's problem" debate. They hoped that birth control would serve as
Claiming the Fetus 12 9
a pretext for the protection of maternal health and the improvement

of women's status as mothers, eliminate (the necessity of) abortions,
and provide the true foundation for the improvement of the race. Thus,
debates about birth control were situated at an imaginary intersection
of ideas about the liberation of sexual desire, individual and wom-
en's rights, childbearing as individual choice or social duty, and the
n1eanings and significance of Inaternity, race improvement, and empire
building.
In his article entitled "The Population Problem in the Peasantry," Ina-
mura Ryiiichi described the sight of hardworking women farmers, torn
between the demanding farn1 work and the burden of bearing and rais-
ing several children. Society, he lamented, expected these women to
bear numerous children despite their inability to care for them suffi-
ciently. Farmers' children remained uneducated and yet women farmers
believed it a crime not to have many children. The ideologues of "con-
servative thought" (hoshu shiso) and imperialism (teikokushugi)!, Ina-
mura pointed out, wanted to expand the race outside of Japan's borders.
Railing against these ideologues, Inamura demanded that the farmers'
unions protest the employment of farmers for militarist ends and as
instruments of invasion (Inamura 1925: 24; see also Sei to Shakai
1926b:43). Attacking the government's encouragement of the emigra-
tion of workers, Inan1ura stated that there was no gain in working in Ja-
pan's colonies, as pay was low and opportunities for advancement were
scarce. Not emigration, he suggested, but birth control would solve the
population problem (Inamura 1925: 26; see also Katsura 1926).
Economics professor Abe Isoo also was convinced that Japan's colo-
nial policy was disastrous. Emphasizing that migrant workers did not
leave Japan out of a lack of patriotism but because they could not earn
a living, he pointed out that Japanese workers could not compete with
cheaper indigenous laborers in Taiwan, Manshii, or Korea. Rather than
oppose Japan's imperialist activities, however, he insisted that the flow
of migrant workers from Korea to Japan (waga naichi!, or "our home-
land") had to be stopped in order to avoid food shortages. Food short-
ages inevitably would increase the number of abortions and infanticides.
To deter this, industrial reform should be accompanied by birth control
measures (Abe 1926b).
Abe only indirectly criticized the government's expansionist policies,
ridiculing the dominant ideology that aimed at increasing Japan's po-
tency to successfully fight future wars through a "multiplication of the
heads." He spoke contemptuously of the many people who still believed,
13 0 Claiming the Fetus
"as in the era of Oda [and] Toyotomi," that the strength of a nation lay
in the size of its population (Abe 1926b).8 The only true policies for in-
creasing wealth and military prowess, he argued, would not be realized
by multiplying the sheer numbers of people, but by improving the phys-
ical and mental capabilities of these people.
ORGANIZING FAMILY LIMITATION
It was not until Margaret Sanger's first visit to Japan that these diverse
groups of social reformers organized what became a birth control move-
ment. In July 1922, Ishimoto Shizue (1897-2002) founded the Japa-
nese Birth Control Study Society (Nihon Sanji Chosetsu Kenkyukai) in
Tokyo. It was headed by Abe Isoo, and soon to join were the labor leader
Suzuki Bunji, the well-known medical doctor Kaji Tokijiro and the so-
cialist feminist Yarnakawa Kikue (Yomiuri Shinbun 1922C). In I923,
Yamamoto followed suit with the Osaka Birth Control Study Society
(Osaka Sanji Seigen Kenkyukai).9
While Ishimoto oversaw the tedious work of translating Sanger's un-
official lectures in Tokyo, Yamamoto served as translator at several of
Sanger's unofficial lectures in the Kansai region, and in May of 1922
translated her text Family Limitation into Japanese as Critique of Sang-
er's Family Limitation Methods (Sangd joshi kazoku seigenh6 hihan)
(Yamamoto Senji I922C; Ishimoto 1935:227-232). The explanations
of several methods of contraception, ranging from rinsing lotions for
cleansing the vagina after intercourse to the condom, pessary, and
sponge, were illustrated and the means of birth control discussed (Ya-
mamoto Senji I922C). The word "critique" in the Japanese title must be
interpreted not only in the literal sense but also as one of several strate-
gies to circumvent censorship. Two warnings leaped to the eye of any-
one who picked up the booklet. "This small booklet on scientific re-
search and critique is not to be distributed to people other than medical
and pharmaceutical specialists" and "Reproduction without permission
is prohibited" were printed on one cover, "Confidential" on the other.
These signaled to the authorities that the booklet was not produced to
disseminate knowledge on birth control to the masses (Yamamoto Senji
1922C: covers).
As opposed to Ishimoto, who raved about "the invasion of 'Sanger-
ism'" (Ishimoto I935:220), Yamamoto was warier of Sanger's promo-
tion of birth control. In the introduction to his translation Critique of
Sanger's Family Limitation Methods:l Yamamoto noted that the book
Claiming the Fetus
was useful for lectures and for those who were knowledgeable in medi-
cal and pharmaceutical matters, but it was not always correct "from
a biologist's perspective" (Yamamoto Senji 1922C:6). Throughout the
text, he added warnings to Sanger's claims that certain methods were
safe. Moreover, the main part of the Japanese booklet consisted of a gen-
eral critique of Sanger's text, peppered \vith references to publications of
German sexologists with whom, he implied, Sanger was unfamiliar. Ya-
mamoto also discussed the obstacles that contraceptive methods faced
in Japan: reliable contraceptive methods were unavailable; the dissemi-
nation of knowledge about contraceptive methods was illegal; and the
general public's demands for knowledge about contraceptive methods
were thoroughly suppressed (Yamamoto Senji 1922C:81).
When Margaret Sanger visited Japan in March 1922, her ambiguous
reputation traveled with her. Reminiscing about the "black ship" of
Commodore Perry in 1852, the press referred to the steamer on which
she arrived as the "black ship of Taisho" (see Yamamoto Senji 1922C:4).
Sanger's visit to Japan was given widespread attention, as evidenced by
several hundred newspaper articles and interviews (Watanabe Katsu-
masa 1978; Johnson 1987:68-70). As early as January 1922, newspa-
pers reported on the attempt of the Japanese authorities to hinder
Sanger's entry into the country. In February, the Tokyo Asahi Shinbun
was outraged at the Japanese government's refusal to provide Sanger
with a visa (Tokyo Asahi Shinbun 1922a). The Tokyo Asahi Shinbun
also explained the most important reason for birth control outlined
in Sanger's brochure Family Li1nitation. The bottom line of Sanger's
message, the Tokyo Asahi Shinbun wrote, was to bear and raise fewer
healthy children instead of many who suffered (Tokyo Asahi Shinbun
I922b). Three weeks later, the same newspaper reported on the restric-
tions on Sanger's activities that were to prevent her from giving public
lectures (Tokyo Asahi Shinbun 1922b).
Worried about the impact of birth control as a force disruptive to the
social and political order, the authorities suggested that the willingness
of the educated middle and upper classes to reproduce would be put at
risk. As they were considered morally and intellectually superior, their
reproduction seemed especially desirable. 10 Moreover, the dissemina-
tion of the means of and knowledge about birth control among mem-
bers of the working class was perceived as a threat to the social order be-
cause proponents of birth control promised no less than the liberation
of women if they were only given correct knowledge and means of birth
control. Sanger wrote, again and again, that once empowered with "sci-
Claiming the Fetus
entific birth control methods, the mother no longer considers herself a

slave. She is glad to be standing on her own two feet. She feels herself
mistress of her own life, and no longer the inert, helpless, hopeless vic-
tim of circumstances" (Sanger I929:527). Sanger told her audience in
Japan that the difference between a "sexually ignorant woman" and a
woman who is able to practice birth control was as striking as the dif-
ference between a free man and a slave. Mothers who were liberated
from "the relentless pressure of involuntary motherhood" through the
exercise of their own intelligence and foresight almost automatically be-
came more interested in life, the future, raising their children, and the
affairs of the community at large (Sanger 1929: 527). One of the crucial
ways to reach this fortunate state was through "true education" about
the methods of birth control, which would only be successful if "men,
women and children had the possibility to recognize the consequences
of their behavior" (Sanger 1929: 526 - 529).
Before her journey to Japan, Margaret Sanger had visited Europe to
learn about birth control there. Upon her return to the United States
in I9I6, she set up the first birth control clinic in Brooklyn, New York.
Officials immediately closed the clinic and imprisoned Sanger for thirty
days for her efforts to familiarize women with contraceptive methods.
Her magazine The Woman Rebel was banned after the seventh issue.
Sanger fled to England before she could be convicted for the dissemina-
tion of information about contraceptive methods. Sanger's family and
friends had distributed her booklet Family Limitation~ and subsequently
Sanger's husband was imprisoned for a month because he refused to re-
veal her whereabouts. 11 Upon her return to New York in 1920, Sanger
met with Ishimoto Shizue. Eventually Ishimoto arranged for an invita-
tion from the magazine Kaizo, one of the progressive magazines of the
time, for Sanger, then president of the American Birth Control League,
to visit Japan (see Johnson I987: 20, 182).
After lengthy negotiations, Sanger was allowed to step onto Japanese
soil but was instructed to restrict her lectures to professional circles.
Upon arrival, she was received by hundreds of people. The police im-
mediately confiscated her brochure Family Limitation. As Sanger was
prohibited from making public appearances, Ishimoto offered her house
for discussions with other women. Sanger also lectured for the Kyoto
Medical Association and other physicians' and pharmacists' organiza-
tions (Tokyo Asahi Shinbun 1922C-d; Osaka Asahi Shinbun 1922; see
also M. Beard 1953: 173). The government had announced that it would
not tolerate gatherings where "the limitation of births in the Japanese
empire is propagated" (see Sasaki 1979: 689), but apparently the at-
tempts to repress Sanger's activities backfired. Ishimoto noted in her
memoir that Sanger was "a stronger magnet than she ever could have
been if allowed to go about undisturbed making speeches on birth con-
trol." Far more had been accomplished, she maintained, by the agitation
growing out of the police prohibition than ever could have come through
simple lectures on the subject (Ishimoto 1935: 226 -227).
Sanger spoke about the means and methods of birth control on more
than a dozen occasions. While she respected the condition laid down for
her entry in her address at the public meeting called by the magazine
Kaizo, she had plenty of opportunities to express her views on birth con-
trol at private meetings with Ishimoto and other women who became
important proponents of birth control in Tokyo, with sex researcher and
educator Yamamoto Senji and his circle in Osaka, and with bacteriolo-
gist Kitazato Shibasaburo and other prominent figures in science and
politics (M. Beard 1953 : 170; Sasaki 1979: 689). A few years later, Abe
Isoo was convinced that Margaret Sanger was more famous than any
other American or British citizen in Japan, and Ishimoto wrote in her
memoir that "no woman, foreign or native, had ever been so well re-
ceived by Japanese men as was Mrs. Sanger" (Ishimoto 1935 : 228; John-
son 1987:74).
Shortly after Sanger's departure and despite the declaration of con-
trolled dissemination on the cover of the booklet Critique of Sanger's
Family Limitation Methods, Yamamoto had 2,000 copies of his transla-
tion printed and distributed to university professors and physicians (see
Sasaki 1979: 691-692). Subsequently, the booklet did not remain in the
hands of "specialists." Several left-wing members of the Osaka unions,
including Noda Ritsuta, Noda Kimiko (Noda's wife), Mitamura Shiro,
and Kutsumi Fusako (Mitamura's wife) heard about it and obtained
permission from Yamamoto to print another 2,000 copies, which they
distributed among the members of the labor movement (Sasaki 1979:
691-692). In September 1922, the newspaper Japan and the Japanese
(Nihon oyohi Nihonjin) printed an article entitled "One Example of the
Harm Caused by the Secretive Way in Which We Deal with Sexuality,"
based on Yamamoto's translation of Sanger's booklet (Yamamoto Senji
1922d). In the autumn of 1922, labor union members Noda Ritsuta,
Noda Kimiko, Mitamura Shiro, and Kutsumi Fusako visited Yamamoto
in Kyoto and talked about the future direction of the propagation of
birth control in Japan. In turn, they invited Yamamoto to Osaka to lec-
ture at the Sodomei Labor School, which they had founded. In January
1923 they met again in Osaka to create the Osaka Birth Control Study
Society (Osaka Sanji Seigen Kenkyukai). Since unions were not recog-
nized at the time, employees were fired for being union members, and
since it also was illegal even to discuss birth control, Kutsumi and Mi-
tamura went undercover and used Noda Ritsuta's house as the society's
office. 12 Noda Kimiko served as the president and Abe Isoo and medical
doctor Majima Yutaka joined the group (Kutsumi in Hane I988:I52;
Sanji Chosetsu Hyoron April I925: advertisement section).
Representing the left wing of the birth control movement vis-a-vis the
bourgeois wing in Tokyo, differences surfaced quickly along the lines of
political convictions, class alignment, and gender. Ishimoto Shizue, Kaji
Tokijiro, Hiratsuka Raicho and others shared a position with strong
eugenic leanings that foreshadowed the eugenic policies of the late 193 os
and early 1940s, which I shall discuss in chapter 5. The study prospec-
tus of the Tokyo-based Japanese Birth Control Study Society, drafted
in July I922, emphasized the necessity of eugenic regulations for birth
control, explained social problems by addressing the "biological" or
"genetic" predisposition of the people concerned, and approved quali-
tative and negative birth control based on "social hygiene" (shakai ei-
sei). With respect to the rapid rate of population growth, the Japanese
Birth Control Study Society acknowledged that "the noble spirit of hu-
manism" had served to avoid "wasteful conflict between the nations,"
and the progress of science had decreased the ravages of diseases by re-
vealing their causes.
The text also warned that "in time there would be appalling short-
ages of the necessary materials for human existence" if the birth rate
continued to rise, even if advanced scientific knowledge promoted pub-
lic welfare. This development, the paper proposed, not only would cause
severe competition inside the nation, but also would become the "source
of international entanglement." Its most distressing aspect, the authors
of the prospectus noted, was apparent in individual lives. "Uncontrolled
pregnancies" robbed mothers of health and raised infant mortality
rates, overburdened the family economy, and prevented a decent educa-
tion of children. Late marriage, an increase in the number of illegitimate
children, infanticide, abortion, and other "social immoralities and trag-
edies" were identified as additional consequences of "uncontrolled preg-
nancies." Finally, the society declared it "absolutely necessary to avoid
any pregnancy when either parent has a disease that should not be trans-
mitted to the offspring." Moreover, it claimed, the correct practice of
birth control principles should cease to be considered an act of immor-
ality and instead should be reevaluated as an act in harmony with social

morality (Ishimoto 1935: 23 0 ).
In contrast, Yamamoto Senji, Kutsumi Fusako, Tsuchida Kyoson,
Mitamura Shiro, Yamakawa Kikue, and a few others at the left end of
the spectrum of birth control advocacy insisted that poverty could be
eliminated only through reform of the economic system. They attacked
the moderates for promoting the all-too-simple neo-Malthusian equa-
tion that if more people were able to practice birth control, fewer would
suffer from poverty. They also spoke out against state interference in
birth control matters and insisted that decisions about the uses of birth
control methods should remain with women, uninfluenced by govern-
mental regulations. Through birth control methods, women would and
should be enabled to decide independently against another pregnancy
and the birth of another child (Kutsumi 1925; Tsuchida 1925; Unno
1925a-b; see also Fujime 1986: 87).
Relations between the Tokyo group's initiator Ishimoto and the
Osaka group's leader Yamamoto remained rather distanced throughout
the 1920S. Ishimoto mentioned Yamamoto only once in her memoirs,
stating that his understanding of birth control principles was not entirely
the same as Sanger's. As a Marxist, she wrote, he "frankly opposed the
neo-Malthusian doctrine, and his attitude carried weight in New Japan
at that time, since Marx was a great master there." She felt, however,
that Yamamoto never fully explained the inconsistency between Mal-
thusianism and Marxism (Ishimoto 1935: 23 1-232). Identifying herself
as a feminist, Ishimoto had been drawn to the birth control movement
by her sympathy for the plight of poor families and her desire to elevate
the status of women. Ishimoto was aware that she and her aristocratic
friends were viewed as "ladies of leisure toying with plants in a hot-
house," and pointed out that in reality they were "really serious and
eager to comprehend the problems of the day no less than to heighten
our cultural charm" (Ishimoto 1935: 232). Like Hiratsuka and other
middle- and upper-class women more than ten years earlier, she hoped
that birth control would eventually strengthen motherhood and the
family (Tipton 1997: 35 1 ).
Yamamoto in turn hardly ever commented on Ishimoto's role in the
movement and sometimes mentioned only her husband's name, even
though Ishimoto Shizue was far more engaged in the Tokyo group. He
associated her with those members of the aristocracy who turned to so-
cial reform out of pity for the poor rather than out of a desire to em-
power them and change power relations substantially. Even to his death,
Claiming the Fetus
Yamamoto rejected what he considered Ishimoto's bourgeois stance on

birth control. Yamamoto also remained reserved with respect to Ishi-
moto's activities, as he felt that Ishimoto's Christian humanism appealed
mainly to the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy. It should be forbidden, he
demanded, for the bourgeois classes to propagate birth control in order
to "improve the quality of the genes" and to declare it the "people's
duty" (Yamamoto Senji 1922C:88). Ishimoto was certainly not a social-
ist or a revolutionary, even though she was accused of just that by the
authorities because of her engagement in the struggle for birth control,
but she was one of the few upper-class women who continued-or
rather renewed-her birth control activities in the postwar era. I shall
describe her stance on birth control and eugenics after World War II in
the next chapter; here it should suffice to mention that today it is Ishi-
moto, rather than the politically more radical Yamamoto, who is cele-
brated as the primary pioneer of birth control in Japan. Although he was
not against eugenic reasoning per se, Yamamoto dedicated himself pri-
marily to the empowerment of uneducated laborers through knowledge,
and in his opinion they needed to "know about a woman's cycle in or-
der to protect themselves properly" (Yamamoto Senji 1927a).
Perhaps due to its engagement on behalf of and entanglement with
labor unions, the Osaka group was far more successful in recruiting
members. While the society in Tokyo published only one issue of its jour-
nal, Small Family (Shokazoku), and other activities remained highly in-
dividualized, by the spring of I923, more than a thousand people had
joined the society in Osaka. Officially, only people who had at least five
children at the time of the application could obtain membership (Ku-
tsumi in Hane I988:I52; Ota T. I976:I46-147; Sasaki 1979:693-
694). Nonetheless, the society attempted to interest a great number and
variety of people in the organization. The society invited "childless
couples"--so read the recruitment material-because birth control
should be practiced both by childless couples who did not want children
and by couples who were blessed with children. "Couples with too
many children" were especially welcome because birth control was use-
ful for women who were weakened by giving birth too often. The soci-
ety also targeted "single men and women," reasoning that many single
men postponed marriage only for economic reasons.
Very few ever challenged the gendered order of Japanese society, ac-
cording to which all women were "equipped with maternal instincts"
(honnoteki ni bosei 0 sonaete iru). Following this reasoning, women
were predestined to make society a safer place for children. Addressing
"male and female taxpayers," appeals to join the society pointed out
that a "large portion of taxes was spent on the care of the physically
weak and the disabled," and the society promised help in preventing the
birth of mentally handicapped children and criminals. The society also
hoped that "idealists" who agreed that motherhood had been turned
into something all too sacrosanct would be interested in a membership.
"Politicians" were urged to become members because the population
had a vital interest in birth control matters, and "statesmen" were ad-
dressed because birth control was crucial to preventing war. And fin-
ally, "everybody" was declared eligible to join because the birth of chil-
dren was everybody's responsibility and birth control was necessary
to appropriately respond to this responsibility (Sanji Chosetsu Hyoron
1925b:6 and 10).
In the course of its fourteen-year existence, more than 6,000 mem-
bers from Japan proper, Taiwan, Manshii, Karafuto, and the South Seas
joined the society in Osaka. It was clear from the membership applica-
tion forms that many applicants were residents of back-street tenements
and other poor people (Kutsumi in Hane 1988:152).13 The Birth Con-
trol Study Society failed to document their cases systematically, but it
did register the number of requests for information and help and re-
corded the applicants' age, sex, and place of residence (Katsura 1926).
According to these notes, the vast majority of inquiries came from men
(more than 5,000), while women sent about 1,300 inquiries (Sanji Cho-
setsu Hyoron 1925e:41).
In numerous outreach efforts, tens of thousands of copies of Ya-
mamoto's Critique ol Sanger's Family Limitation Methods were printed
and distributed among the audience at activists' lectures on sex educa-
tion and birth control. Society members held numerous educationallec-
tures within the organizational framework of the labor movement and
offered personal counseling to workers (Okuda 1925; Sanji Chosetsu
Hyoron 1925e; Ishimoto 1935: 234). In order to facilitate access to birth
control information, the Birth Control Study Society founded branch
offices in Kyoto, Kobe, Nagoya, Okayama, Hiroshima, and Sakai, all of
which also served as birth control consultation offices. Counselors were
available at all of the branches (Sanji Chosetsu Hyoron 1925e:41), and
posters and pamphlets addressed potential members in the following
manner: "For poor people who do not have children! For people whose
health has been weakened or who are ill! Do not hesitate to come in. We
will advise you in a friendly manner .... If you are from the countryside,
please send us a letter and enclose an envelope and a 3-sen stamp for our
Claiming the Fetus
reply. This counseling office is not a private business. It is a public coun-

seling office where well-known people will advise you" (Sei to Shakai
February 1926c:52).
The Heimin Hospital in Tokyo housed the Central Counseling Office
for Birth Control (Chilo Sanji Chosetsu Sodanjo), which welcomed
people who were in need of advice on birth control. Its representatives
and counselors were Abe Isoo, Kaji Tokijiro, Yamamoto Senji, Suzuki
Bunji, Shimanaka Yuzo, and Tsuchida Kyoson (Sei to Shakai Febru-
ary I926: 52). Various other organizations also set up counseling cen-
ters for birth control, and their number rapidly increased during the lat-
ter half of the 1920S and the early 1930S (Sei no Kenkyu 1919C). Popular
Medicine, for example, printed an advertisement for the counseling cen-
ter in Osaka, announcing that people who were in dire straits because
they had too many children and those who should not have any children
because of their physical condition could order informational material
about "true, serious birth control" for 2 sen (Tsuzoku Igaku March
19 2 7: 9 6 ).
The Federation of Kansai Women (Kansai Fujin Rengokai) in Osaka
founded the Japanese Union for Birth Control (Nihon Sanji Seigen Kyo-
kai) and set up a eugenic counseling center (yuseiji sodansho). There,
Oku Mumeo, a companion of Hiratsuka Raicho and one of the first fe-
male Diet members after World War II, opened the office with the slo-
gan "To bear or not to bear is a woman's liberty" (umu mo umanai mo
onna no jiyu). In 1934, Ishimoto Shizue founded yet another counseling
center for birth control on a "purely scientific and non-commercial
basis" modeled on that of Margaret Sanger's clinic in New York. The
main service consisted of biweekly consultations with a doctor she was
friendly with. In addition to numerous visits by women who had trav-
eled from afar, more than 700 written requests reached the clinic in its
first two months. Fifty patients were advised personally and Ishimoto
began to document cases (see Johnson 1987: 92).
According to Ishimoto's notes, the main motive of women who
sought advice about birth control was the inability to offer their children
a good upbringing. Counseling centers were used mainly by married
women, workers from disadvantaged classes, and mothers who already
had two or three children and who saw a further child as an economic
burden that would threaten their very existence (Ishirnoto 1935: 37 2 -
373). Yamamoto also noted that the number of women in the counseling
centers was particularly high toward the end of the year, when money
was tight, and continually emphasized the lack of knowledge and the
desperate situation of poor couples with many children. Yamamoto and

other birth control activists described case after case in their publica-
tions (Koiwa 1925). One exemplary story of a couple desperate for ad-
vice on birth control was printed at the outset of a debate among three
activists in the Taiwan Nichinichi Shinbun from 31 July 1925: "There
are nine people in our household. We have eaten almost all of this year's
food. We are still young, have four children and will probably have two
or three more unless you instruct us about contraception methods"
(quoted in Yamamoto, Yasuda, and Katsura 1925).
Poverty was most often cited as the core problem in the plight of pro-
letarian women who contacted the birth control offices by mail. Their
lack of health care and proper nutrition was rooted in their poverty as
well as in the hard work they did for their families and in the factories.
Frequent births only added to an already disadvantaged existence. Ar-
guing that birth control was more necessary for proletarian women than
for anybody else, the politically more radical activists emphasized that
liberation from their plight could come about only through class conflict
(Kanda 1925 :46-48). The reports of the birth control branch offices
typically described the economic situation of workers who sought ad-
vice on contraception as harsh and almost unbearable. One letter ex-
plained, "I earn 50 yen and my wife earns 10 yen. That makes for a hard
life in a three-person household. Thus, birth control is of vital impor-
tance to us" (Okuda 1925: 26). Another letter read, "We have four chil-
dren and my husband makes about 62 yen a month. Our environment
is rather unhygienic and the care for my children is insufficient. I cannot
understand the bourgeois position that birth control is morally objec-
tionable. Please advise me" (Okuda 1925: 26). Defending contraception
against the moral reservations of the "petty bourgeoisie," activists main-
tained that birth control was "the last resort of the poor and weak." To
counter opposition to the legalization of birth control methods, they
maintained that it was "entirely unrelated to the aristocracy and the
wealthy" and should not remain prohibited just because "a few aristo-
crats took advantage of it" (Koike Shiro 1925).
However, middle-class women and men were also among those seek-
ing counseling. A significant number of middle-class women reported
that they took up work because they had run away from their husbands
or their husbands had abandoned them and they saw themselves inca-
pable of raising another child. Men who were looking for a spouse and
hoped for appropriate advice on how to find one also came to these
counseling centers. It is unclear to what extent they succeeded as, ac-
Claiming the Fetus
cording to Yamamoto's recollections, few women who were in financial

difficulty due to a divorce took up the advice to remarry. After the dis-
appointment with one man, most preferred to raise their children alone
(Yamamoto Senji I926a).
When Yamamoto, together with some of the other founding members
of the birth control movement, began to publish the journal Birth Con-
trol Review (Sanji Ch6setsu Hy6ron) in February I92S, he had long
since redeemed the promise he and Yasuda Tokutaro had given to Mar-
garet Sanger upon her departure. She had urged them to fight with her
"for the sake of the world's working class and world peace" (Sasaki
I979: 689). The board of Birth Control Review included some of the
most outspoken activists in the movement and reflected the increasing
cooperation between the two groups in Tokyo and Osaka. In addition
to Yamamoto Senji, Yasuda Tokutaro and Abe Isoo were on the board.
Other members included medical doctors: Kinoshita Tosaku as well as
Kaji Tokijiro and Kato Tokiya, who were hospital directors of the Tokyo
People's Hospital (Tokyo Heimin Byoin) and the Osaka People's Hospi-
tal (Osaka Heimin Byoin), respectively. Majima Yutaka served as a head
physician in the Social Affairs Office (Shakai-kyoku) of the Tokyo city
government. Suzuki Bunji provided an important link to the labor
union. Fujizawa Atsushi was the Osaka branch leader of the Harmo-
nization Society (Kyochokai), and Unno Kotoku was a professor at Ryii-
tani University (Sanji Ch6setsu Hy6ron May I9 2S : 60).14
The Osaka-based Birth Control Study Society aimed at "constructive
birth control" (kensetsuteki sanji chosetsu) and "race improvement"
(jinshu kojo) and published a seven-point agenda. Its first point was that
children swayed the health and happiness of families and society. The
responsibility and duty of parents was "to cooperate and guide these
children with sufficient knowledge and farsightedness through matters
of strength and weakness, wisdom and folly, ups and downs." Evoking
"life in an era of science," the manifesto urged readers that" knowledge
of various sciences, namely biology and the rapidly advancing sciences
of genetics, eugenics, and sexology," had to be made fruitful for human-
kind in order to liberate the populace from "useless menaces and mis-
taken superstitions." According to the society, individual life was not
to "run counter to the great principles of society, and knowledge about
birth control must not be lacking in our families' everyday lives" (Ya-
mamoto Senji I92Sa). On the Birth Control Study Society's agenda,
"knowledge of birth control" was defined in a twofold manner. It meant
"giving the desired child to the lonely, childless \vife" and also "giving
Claiming the Fetus
the mother who is exhausted from continuous pregnancies a rest." In-

deed, the physical burden of frequent pregnancies was not a trivial mat-
ter. As Mitamura Shiro reported, even "physically strong and healthy
women" eventually suffered from giving birth too frequently and were
often additionally burdened by their children's early death. He recalled
a "physically strong couple" who had corne to see him for advice on
contraception. They had wed in 1920 and had had a new baby almost
every year thereafter. Their first boy had been a miscarriage but in 1922
the woman gave birth to a girl who was then (in 1925) four years old.
Another boy, born in 1924, died in infancy. A second girl died in 1925,
shortly after her birth. How could he, Mitamura (1925) seemed to
plead, not help this woman?
For many left-leaning advocates of birth control, their engagement re-
mained tightly intertwined with what they called the "liberation of sex."
Unno Kotoku (1925a), for example, wholeheartedly agreed with Ya-
mamoto (1925C) about the "liberation of sex" when he wrote that the
happiness of the individual (and of the populace) was of primary impor-
tance. He also expressed his hope that pronatalist ideology (umeyo, fuy-
aseyo) and "other superstitious beliefs" would soon disappear (Unno
1925a). Ignoring that Malthus had first formulated his "Essay on the
Principle of Population" (1798) as a polemic against the socialists in En-
gland who believed that the transformation of ownership would lead to
social harmony, Unno pointed out to the readers of Sex and Society that
modern life was more complex than it had been during Malthus' time
(1766-1834). In contrast to Malthus' Law of Nature, which according
to Malthus' suggestions could be overcome only by abstinence, Unno
advised his audience to acknowledge that sexual desire had an impact
on marriage, the happiness, health, and beauty of a couple, their chil-
dren's occupations, and in fact all of cultural life. The use of contracep-
tive devices (which Malthus had opposed) would enable individual
women and families to take control of all of these factors (Unno 1925a).
If the "liberation of sex" for Unno meant the empowerment of indi-
viduals to make decisions on family size, other advocates of birth con-
trol embraced the new possibilities of engaging in the pleasures of sex
without worrying about conception at all. Quite radically for the mid-
1920S, Tsuchida Kyoson proposed understanding sexual intercourse
and the production of children as two separate matters. Just as his sex-
ologist comrades did, he attributed an overwhelming importance for hu-
man life to the overall "sexual reality," rather than only to certain sex-
ual problems. He insisted that sex was important not simply because it
Claiming the Fetus
caused problems but because it had a powerful impact on a human be-

ing's entire life. "We have all kinds of desires," he assured his audience,
"but none are as strong as our sexual desires and fantasies" (Tsuchida
1926:7). He also wrote that children were one goal of love but not
the only one. Equating sexual intercourse with producing children, he
proposed, would mean perceiving the two people involved as mere ma-
chines. Hence, birth control methods had to be employed correctly to
ensure the parents' happiness and the child's health. Tsuchida pro-
claimed the slogan "multiply and procreate" as a plea for quality-
quality of life for parents as well as children-which was of course detri-
mental to how pronatalist ideology was understood and promoted by
the state (Tsuchida 1925 :4-5).
Another core item on the Osaka group's agenda concerned desirable
techniques of birth control. The birth control they fought for was de-
fined by the manifesto as "hindering the unification of egg and sperm."
Hence, birth control was considered a "tool based on life and biology in
order to escape mere chance." The seventh and last regulation explicitly
rejected the various family limitation measures taken after conception,
such as infanticide and abortion, as "cruel and inhumane." In order to
avoid these "criminal practices," the Osaka group's agenda emphasized
that it was "necessary to instruct male and female youth in correct sex
education" (Sanji Chosetsu Hyoron 1925a). In their writings, the mem-
bers of the Birth Control Study Society and the authors of Birth Control
Review agreed that contraception was the only way to abolish back-al-
ley abortions. Contraception would put a stop to doctors who "misused
their art." It would not only impoverish physicians willing to perform
abortions but it also would make abortions themselves unnecessary (Ya-
mamoto Senji 1926a). In their roles as writers and public lecturers, most
crusaders for birth control drew a clear line between the practices of in-
fanticide and abortion and contraception. In their role as practitioners,
however, they did not.
Rather than questioning the "immorality of the techniques that ter-
minate life," as had Yasuda Satsuki roughly ten years prior to the foun-
dation of the society, most of them restricted themselves to promoting
contraception as a means of preventing rather than terminating preg-
nancy (Abe 1925: I). In numerous essays on the necessity of birth con-
trol, Yamamoto thundered against abortions, which, according to news-
paper reports, increased during the latter half of the 1920S, a period
fraught with economic difficulty at the onset of the worldwide depres-
sion. Yamamoto remembered one of these reports as follows:
Claiming the Fetus I43
On I9 May I926, the police discovered that the military physician Kimura
Yasuo had performed abortions in his clinic Kunai in Osaka for several
dozen women from prefectures all over Japan-Fukuoka, Okayama, and
Fukui. There may have been more women involved whose place of resi-
dence remained unknown. The abortions were done by surgery. About ten
buried fetuses were discovered in the garden of the clinic. As if that were
not bad enough, it also was discovered that another two or three physicians
at reputable hospitals had performed abortions for coffeehouse employees
as well. (Yamamoto Senji I926a)
When confronted with desperate women, not all advocates of birth con-
trol were as adamantly opposed to abortion as Yamamoto, but they did
consider it the last resort of an involuntarily pregnant woman (Kato T.
1925a). Providers of safe, if illegal, abortions reminded the skeptics
among birth control activists that pregnant women seeking to terminate
the pregnancy could easily fall into the hands of charlatans. Other
skeptics observed in dismay how people took advantage of women who
were pregnant with unwanted children. In one reported case, a man had
put an advertisement for a questionable abortive medication in a news-
paper. When pregnant women came to him complaining that the med-
ication had not worked as promised in the advertisement, he performed
high-priced abortions and later attempted to blackmail his victims. The
police estimated the number of victims at more than one hundred (Tama
I994: 8). A pharmacy in Osaka offered an abortive device and made the
price relative to the month of pregnancy. A woman in her first month
was charged IO yen, in her second month 20 yen, and so on. In another
town, a man sold an "abortion cream" for IO yen. By the time women
realized that the cream was useless, he had disappeared (Katsura I926).
Hence, those nlembers of the movement who were capable of doing
so also helped women who did not fulfill the requirements for terminat-
ing a pregnancy legally. Majima Yutaka, for example, who had learned
of the latest abortion techniques while visiting Switzerland and England,
founded a sex education counseling center (seikyoiku sodansho) where
he provided women with counseling about methods of birth control.
Every day he examined and advised dozens of mostly working-class pa-
tients. Many women, however, first came to him when they were already
pregnant and abortion appeared to be the only solution to their di-
lemma. In his autobiography, Majima noted that he and other doctors
sometimes deliberately made incorrect diagnoses so that they could per-
form abortions in order to help these women (Sei to Shakai January
I926: 69; see also Ishizaki I992: 103, I92). Eventually, Majima was ar-
rested after he had carried out an abortion on a woman at the request

of her well-to-do partner. Suggesting that abortion was a crime that
was carried out only for upper-class women, newspapers referred to
Majima and his friends as an "abortion club" (datai kurabu). They did
not mention, however, that Majima also had performed abortions on
poor women to his own financial disadvantage (see Tama I994:9).
Other members of the birth control movement also frequently dealt with
women who were desperate to get an abortion. Shibahara Urako, for ex-
ample, a midwife activist in Osaka, was engaged in the dissemination of
hygiene concepts, social education, and the improvement of living con-
ditions in fishing villages. Trained as a nurse and midwife, she agitated
for birth control primarily among the working class and provided abor-
tions for involuntarily pregnant women, for which she was repeatedly
arrested (Fujime I993: 93, 1999)
PREVENTING CONCEPTION
Insights into the worrisome situation of involuntarily pregnant women

constantly reminded birth control activists of how crucial the dissemi-
nation of sexual knowledge was, how desperately many women were
searching for means of birth control and abortion, and thus how neces-
sary the development of safe birth control devices and the reform of
abortion laws were. Although birth control activists vigorously advo-
cated contraception, the law and the lack of knowledge, especially
among workers and farmers, were not the only reasons contraception
was not practiced more broadly. Women and men who were willing to
practice contraception had very few safe options and still fewer afford-
able ones.
The methods most commonly recommended by birth control activ-
ists were temporary abstinence and coitus interruptus. Coitus interrup-
tus, or the Onan Method (Onanfii), was classified as a "constructive
birth control method" (Yamamoto Senji 1925a) that "prevented preg-
nancy" (Tsuchida I925) and was thus a "cultured method" (bunmeijin
toshite no mottomo riko na yarikata) (Mitamura S. I925). For fear of
censorship, the authors of both Birth Control Review and Sex and So-
ciety avoided describing specific methods but explained that readers
should search in the Bible for the section on Onan (Yamamoto Senji
1925h:39; Abe 1929).15
Another method the birth control advocates approved was developed
by Ogino Kyiisaku, who initially did not engage in the popularization of

sexual knowledge and birth control. A medical doctor, Ogino developed
a timetable for ovulation that complemented the calculations of the fe-
male cycle by the Austrian physician Hermann Knaus. He published his
findings in the Journal of the Japanese Association of Gynecologists
(Nippon Fujinka Gakkai Zasshi) in 1924 and was rewarded for out-
standing research by the same professional association. Despite this
prize, Ogino received mixed medical reviews from his colleagues in Ja-
pan. 16 His theory, hOV\Tever, quickly moved outside medical journals and
circulated through midwifery journals, sexological journals, women's
magazines, and other popular print media. Ogino began in 1932 to pub-
lish his findings of a contraceptive method based on his scientific re-
search and thereafter wrote works in Japanese, German, and English for
a general audience (see, e.g., Ogino K. 1930).
By that time, the Ogino Periodical Abstinence Method (Ogino-
shiki shuki kinyoku hininho)-commonly referred to as the Safe Period
Method (Anzenkiho)-had already caught the attention of birth con-
trol advocates who recommended it but also cautioned that it failed
if women \tvere not adequately informed. It is unlikely that many were.
Yamamoto estimated that the failure rate ranged bet\veen IO percent
among educated women and 70 percent among women who carne to
birth control counseling centers (Yanlamoto Senji I925f). In addition,
neither physicians nor midwives received sufficient training and their
textbooks contained no information on this or any other contraceptive
method. Hence in most cases they were unable to advise women accord-
ingly (Kato T. 1925b; see also Rousseau 1998).
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, condoms (danshi sakku)
and diaphragms (shikyu sakku), when advertised in general-interest
magazines, commonly had been described not as contraceptives, but as
devices to prevent venereal diseases and other pathological impairments
of the womb. In the text of an advertiselnent in The Sun, for example, a
certain Dr. Akimoto, head of a gynecological clinic, assured readers that
the diaphragnl was the ideal preventative device for venereal and other
diseases in women. Its contraceptive potential remained unmentioned
(Taiy63 September I9I3: advertisement section). As shown at the be-
ginning of this chapter, during the I920S and early 1930S, condoms, di-
aphragms, and other contraceptive devices typically appeared together
with other means of protection against venereal diseases. While the use
of condoms in the military was clearly and exclusively driven by the wish
Claiming the Fetus
Figure 10. Condoms were advertised openly even after 1937. Rather
than being sold exclusively as contraceptives, they were promoted as
protective devices against venereal diseases under the name "hygiene
sack" (eisei sakku). These advertisement boards were photographed by
Kuwahara Kineo in 1937 at the entrance of a pharmacy in the Ueno
district of Tokyo. From Kuwabara Kineo's Tokyo I934-I993 (Tokyo:
Shinchosha). Used with the kind permission of Shinchosha.
to prevent infection with venereal disease, their use was very different in
civilian society, where the possibilities of birth control added to the at-
tractiveness of these devices.
In counseling centers for birth control, condoms could be bought for
20 or 30 sen, roughly a third of the price on the free market. Di-
aphragms were distributed by counseling centers for 30 or 40 sen,
whereas in pharmacies they cost almost five times as much (Kutsumi in
Hane 1988: 152) (see figure 10). Even if contraceptives remained a lux-
ury to many and agitation for sex education and birth control was mon-
itored and often suppressed by the authorities, they eventually did reach
remote regions of Japan. Ella Wiswell documented the case of a young
woman who moved from Suyemura to a city in 1935. One day she sent
a packet of condoms to her parents in Suyemura. In the enclosed letter
she wrote, "Use these! You have too many children" (Smith and Wiswell
19 82 : 89)
Another kind of intrauterine contraceptive device was developed by
medical doctor and founder of the journal Sexological Research Ota
Tenrei and introduced in 1932 (Ota-shiki hinin ringu). Similar to the
Contraceptive Needle that had been banned in I930, this new model
faced its own problems. One was the cost. As a gold and gold-plated in-
strument, it was exorbitantly expensive at 10 yen and was clearly unaf-
fordable for those who needed it most (Katsura 1926). In addition, it
had to be inserted by a capable doctor to ensure that it worked and did
not injure the woman internally. Often neither was the case. Women be-
came pregnant despite using it and many suffered from uterine infec-
tions or even became infertile (Takeuchi I934:404; see also Shimazaki
I99I:96). In 1936, the Ordinance Regulating Harmful Contraceptive
Devices of 1930 was amended to include Ota's instrument on the
grounds that it was dangerous to women's health. 17 Other provisions re-
stricted the use of devices injected or inserted into the uterus as well as
contraceptive devices that were determined to be threatening to a wom-
an's health. Condoms were not covered by this provision but-after
1937-that did not keep the authorities from pursuing those who dis-
tributed them (Shimazaki 199I: 96; Rousseau 1998: 2I4-218).
REMODELING THE LAW
By 1929, the powerful emergence of eugenic and genetic concepts had

begun to decisively influence the direction of the birth control move-
ment. Most of those who initially had hoped for the liberation of the
masses and had focused on economic reform and individual freedom of
choice slowly moved toward a more state-centered position that priori-
tized the national body rather than individual liberty. The seductive
prospect of modeling the imperial populace according to eugenic rules,
and the frustratingly small successes of the birth control movement in
terms of contraception, inspired a number of activists to take up even
Hiratsuka's 1917 proposal to force sterilization on people who were
diagnosed with "genetic diseases." They proposed that preventing "ge-
netically defective" people from reproducing was of primary importance
for these people's "own protection and the protection of the entire soci-
ety." They classified conditions as diverse as tuberculosis, syphilis, dia-
betes, hemophilia, epilepsy, hysteria, mental illness, chronic alcoholism,
"habitual criminality," and "idiocy" as "genetic defects" (Abe 1927a,
1929; Sugiyama N. 1928).
Abe Isoo considered the marriage prohibition for the "genetically
burdened" enacted in many Western countries an inadequate solution
because it did not keep them from reproducing. He elaborated that for
\vealthy capitalists, the birth of handicapped children might not present
Claiming the Fetus
a material problem, but such children could present an existential threat

to lower-class families. Among the "genetically burdened" persons he
listed were alcoholics, those suffering from tuberculosis and leprosy, and
"genetically burdened criminals." The solution he offered was routine
sterilization of persons when they came to the hospital to receive treat-
ment for these conditions (Abe 1927a). Once a savior of the underpriv-
ileged as the founder of Japan's first socialist party and a crusader for
the abolition of prostitution, Abe previously had found it "immoral" for
young women to be forced into prostitution by their own families in or-
der to save the parents from financial ruin (Abe 1911a-b, 1915). Abe
had argued that the victimization of several tens of thousands of women
who were sold into prostitution by their families merely to uphold so-
cial customs had to be stopped and had insisted that peace lay in the re-
alization of birth control (Abe 1911C, 1925, 1927a). At the end of the
1920S, however, he began to support mandatory sterilization because he
considered "genetically diseased" descendants too great a burden on so-
ciety (Abe 1927a), and by the end of World War II he had turned into
an advocate for early marriage (Abe 1944).
Unno K6toku, another author of articles in Sex and Society and ac-
tivist in the birth control movement, deemed it difficult to "give people
with bad genes the right to have a child," but he insisted against the new
voices for positive eugenics that a newborn child by all means had "the
right to live." He agreed with Abe that people with "bad genes" (iden-
teki na akushitsusha), the mentally ill (seishin byosha), "idiots" (ha-
kuchi teinosha), criminals, and the handicapped were all "anti-social"
(hanshakaiteki) and a nuisance to society, but claimed that they had the
right to live because they had been born. In contrast to Abe's confident
call for the sterilization of certain "types" of people, Unno aimed at re-
minding his audience that "far too little was known about genetics to
make any connections between the progress of a society and the genetic
quality of its people" (Unno 1925b:I6-17).
Other birth control activists increasingly pushed for the massive in-
volvement of the state in birth control matters. In the last issue of Sex
and Society, before it was discontinued for financial reasons, Kaji Toki-
jir6's appeal to the state to provide the legal and institutional framework
for his concept ran sharply counter to the stance of its founder and edi-
tor, Yamamoto Senji. Yamamoto had always emphasized that use of the
various means and methods of birth control should be based on indi-
vidual choice rather than on state enforcement. In contrast, Kaji Toki-
jir6, an advisor in the Central Advice Office for Birth Control in Tokyo,
appealed to the state to make birth control part of its business (kokka
jigy6), to support research on birth control methods, and to encourage
the population to practice these methods. Kaji's proposal for the "build-
ing of customs" in order "to manage sexual duties" called for the mas-
sive involvement of the state in the production of "good-quality chil-
dren" (Kaji 1926a:I3-16). The first step in that direction would be a
strict contraception law forcing people who suffered from infectious
and genetic diseases to practice birth control, as, in his view, contracep-
tion should not be a matter of individual choice. Kaji declared the pro-
motion of early marriage the second important step. He urged the read-
ers of Sex and Society to stop considering marriage sacrosanct, as "we
do not consider eating rice a sacrosanct affair either." If people got mar-
ried at a young age, as he recommended, more marriages might end in
divorce, but he viewed a rising divorce rate as preferable to the many
problems an unmarried life entailed (Kaji 1926a).
Lamenting the consequences of the late marriages of men around the
age of thirty and women around the age of twenty-five, Kaji maintained
that all these middle-aged men and women experienced difficulties mar-
rying and consequently engaged in a variety of "unnatural practices."
Among these, he noted, was masturbation, of which one could not be
sure that it was not injurious to the body and the mind. He acknowl-
edged that homosexuality (d6seiai oyohi nanshoku) might well be an
age-old custom, common among both female prostitutes and daimyo,
but insisted that contemporary homosexual behavior emerged from un-
favorably delayed marriages and people being single-and hence was
problematic.
Illegitimate children and abortion, in Kaji's view, were another result
of the vast numbers who remained unmarried. Often illegitimate infants
were abandoned, and women who had had an abortion suffered from
severe health problems, died, or killed themselves. Even if things did not
escalate that far, Kaji argued, to remain unmarried until middle age
would bring about hysteria, neurasthenia, and suicide in women and sex
crimes and murder in men (Kaji 1926a:II, 1926b). Kaji's solution to
this scenario was simple. If birth control was legal and possible, young
and middle-aged couples could postpone pregnancy until they felt eco-
nomically secure. Instead of having children immediately after marriage,
couples would be able to spend time together and find out whether they
wanted to stay together. Thus, the divorce rate would decrease and there
would be fewer single women with children. Couples who did not want
children would not have to have them and those who were physically
I50 Claiming the Fetus
weak or suffered from "genetic defects" would not have children either
(Kaji 1926a:12).
In 1929, members of both birth control groups, the Osaka Birth
Control Study Society and the Japanese Birth Control Study Society in
Tokyo, wrote up a Petition for the Public Recognition of Birth Control
(Sanji seigen koninan) that compromised on the more radical demands
of previous years. They emphasized that birth control was desirable not
only from the perspective of the proletariat, but from the perspective of
all representatives of the "new people" (kakuha shinnin daigishi)-i.e.,
those who had the welfare of society in mind, favored social reforms,
and understood the social and political significance of sexual knowl-
edge. Based on the assumption that abortion up to the third month was
relatively safe for the pregnant woman, the Petition for the Public Rec-
ognition of Birth Control demanded its legalization within this time
frame. The petition also proposed the introduction of a fine instead of
imprisonment for people who carried out an abortion at a later stage of
pregnancy. Along with the relaxation of the maternal protection criteria
and thus a broader interpretation of the "mother's weak constitution"
as the basis for a legal abortion, it suggested that practice should be re-
stricted to physicians who would be the only specialists able to diagnose
the previously mentioned indications (Ishizaki 1992: 100).
The first petition was never presented to the Lower House. Yama-
moto Senji, who should have presented it, was stabbed to death by a
right-wing radical on 5 March 1929, after an assembly where he had
spoken out against Japan's China politics. However, in January 193 I,
Abe Isoo, Ishimoto Shizue, Hiratsuka Raicho, Majima Yutaka, and a
few other activists founded the Japanese Birth Control Federation (Ni-
hon Sanji Ch6setsu Renmei) as an umbrella organization for all birth
control branch offices. They drafted a new petition for the legalization
of abortion and contraceptives based on three sets of indicators. The
medical indicator aimed at the "pure protection of the mother" (jun
bosei hogo) and affected all-women for whom a full-term pregnancy or
giving birth would be life-threatening. Among these potentially life-
threatening diseases were tuberculosis, severe liver, heart, and blood
diseases, severe disabilities, diseases of the reproductive organs, and
mental disorders. The doctor also would be allowed to prescribe con-
traceptives in the case of serious illnesses associated with pregnancy,
nervous ailments, and brain disease and certain eye and ear diseases. As
in the first petition, they also proposed to initiate scientific research on
birth control methods and to place into the hands of doctors expensive
Claiming the Fetus
contraceptives that until then had been distributed by laypersons work-

ing in advice centers (see Ishizaki 1992: 102).
The eugenic indicator initially was useful only as a basis for contra-
ception and was intended primarily to prevent women with genetic dis-
eases, who represented a "burden to their family and the state," from re-
producing. Another eugenically motivated proposition was to advise
blood relatives against marrying one another. If it were not possible to
prevent that, then birth control for both partners should be used in or-
der to prevent the birth of disabled children (fugusha).
The socioeconomic indicator left doctors with the greatest leeway for
issuing a certificate, as the findings merely had to attest to the fact that
a further birth would endanger the financial existence of the family and
would be the source of poverty and crime. The petition once again em-
phasized that only physicians should be qualified to certify the existence
of one of the three indicators, as well as to carry out abortions. If "im-
pure motives" were involved, however, then an abortion should be con-
sidered a "dangerous crime" (Honda 193 I: 32-35). Eventually, the Jap-
anese Women's Birth Control Federation (Nihon Sanji Ch6setsu Fujin
Renmei), successor to the Japanese Birth Control Federation (Nihon
Sanji Ch6setsu Renmei), brought forth this second petition for the re-
form of the abortion law in August of 1932.
In the first year of the establishment of Manchukuo, the Horne De-
partment again rejected the petition. The movement lost its momentum
and began to disintegrate; it eventually collapsed in 1937, when even
publications on birth control were banned. The increasing militarization
of Japanese society during these years and especially the outbreak of
a full-blown war with China in 1937 had brought new challenges to
the sexological project, eventually thrusting it into oblivion. Rather, as
I shall describe in the next chapter, several forces contributed to its dis-
appearance from public space.
CHAPTER 5
Breeding the
Japanese "Race"
We are like a great crowd of people packed into a small and
narrow room, and there are only three doors through which
we might escape, namely emigration, advance into world
markets, and expansion of territory. The first door, emigra-
tion, has been barred to us by the anti-Japanese immigration
policies of other countries. The second door, advance into
world markets, is being pushed shut by tariff barriers and the
abrogation of commercial treaties .... It is quite natural that
Japan should rush upon the last remaining door.
Hashimoto Kingoro, "Seinen ni uttau"
The increasing militarization of Japanese society during the 1930S and

early 1940s, addressed by ideologues like Hashimoto Kingoro (Tsun-
oda, de Bary, and Keene 1964: 289), brought new challenges to the sex-
ological project. The disintegration of sexology, however, was not sim-
ply the effect of suppression by the state, nor did it happen in one blow.
Rather, sexologists faced numerous difficulties (e.g., a paper shortage)
that affected them in the same ways it did authors and publishers of
other kinds of publications or social reformers and activists more gen-
erally. Some challenges, however, were perhaps specific to the sexologi-
cal project. One of them was censorship and other means of suppres-
sion, which drove some sexologists into bankruptcy or underground
and simply silenced others. The authorities responsible for the preserva-
tion of social order and morals became increasingly involved in the bla-
tant suppression of activities that challenged this order, be it the labor
movement or sexological utterances. Censorship equated the sexologi-
cal project with pornography, or writing that aimed at the stimulation
of uncontrolled erotic pleasure rather than the creation of knowledge.
Breeding the Japanese "Race" 153
As more and more political activities were branded as communist and

therefore destructive to the state, sexological publications, instructions
on birth control, attempts at appeasing those who deemed masturbation
injurious, and representations of the incitement of erotic desire and plea-
sure all were classified as "disruptive to morals" or simply "obscene."
The emergence of "racial hygiene" challenged the fragile position
of sexologists within the realm of science. The forceful emergence of eu-
genic and racial hygienist thought represented a competing program
that, by co-opting the rhetorical figures of the sexological project, such
as "the demands of the masses," marginalized a sexology that had posi-
tioned itself as a tool of liberation. Racial hygienists emerged as the
new experts ready to provide the imperialist state with the instruments
for manufacturing a flawless, superior race, ready and able to push the
Japanese empire to new heights. Finally, a turn to pronatalist-imperial-
ist propaganda in popular media robbed the sexologists of their hard-
earned foothold in the public arena.
THE SUBVERSIVE POWER OF SEXUAL KNO\VLEDGE
During the second half of the 1930S the censorship of sexological pub-
lications, the confiscation of contraceptives, the frequent imprisonment
of leading proponents of sex education and birth control, and the pro-
hibition of all other activities brought to a standstill the efforts of sexol-
ogists and other birth control activists. Financial problems resulting
from frequent censorship and the confiscation of published issues had
forced many publishers to discontinue their journals (Oshikane 1977:
185 -201), and by 1938, sexological journals had been completely swept
out of public sight.
Tvvo sets of legislation-both of which affected the activities of the
sexologists-provided the hazy boundaries of the censors' range of ac-
tions, which varied from active social policies to open suppression. Pub-
lications, public lectures, and other activities of sexologists were classi-
fied as violations of legislation that aimed specifically at regulating either
public order or morals. One set of legislation ~Tas to ensure the main-
tenance of "public order." Its most significant manifestations were the
Peace Police La\v of 1900, the Peace Preservation Law of 1925, and the
increasingly strict regulations implemented after 1937. Eventually, these
regulations were applied not only to communists, socialists, and sexol-
ogists but also to other groups that were viewed as a thorn in the sides
of the authorities (Mitchell 1973). The Peace Preservation Law comple-
I54 Breeding the Japanese "Race"
mented the Peace Police Law (Chian keisatsu h6), which had targeted
primarily "anti-government" groups.1 Passed at the same time as general
male suffrage, the Peace Preservation Law was meant to serve mainly as
the legal base for strict procedures against communists and other per-
sons who had "organized an association with the object of revolution-
izing the national constitution" (Sebald 1936: 259). 2
The other set of legislation was concerned with the careful establish-
ment and preservation of "public morals" and with increasing vigor tar-
geted publications and activities that were deemed "obscene," "vulgar,"
or, more generally, destructive to public morality. A number of decrees
within the legislation for the preservation of public morals regulated the
publication of texts and images in "books and periodicals that violated
customs and morals" (fuzoku kairan no shuppanbutsu oyobi shinbun-
shi).3 This last set of regulations was also modified frequently in order
to adapt to new types of publications. Accordingly, new categories of
public moral violations continuously emerged from the censors' reports.
The legislation eventually covered almost all representations of sex, with
the exception of those that defined reproduction as the exclusive pur-
pose of sex and unambiguously emphasized that sex belonged within the
confines of marriage (Akama I927; Naimusho keihokyoku 1976a:I93).
In the case of publication, violations of regulations on customs and
morals (fuzoku kairan) were covered by the term fuzoku kinshi, which
included a broad range of so-called immoralities. These labels were of
course neither clear-cut nor unmistakable.
Officers of the Special Higher Police served as censors who controlled
the production and distribution of publications, including information
on sex, which was deemed injurious to public morals. The guardians of
mores and social order in the police insinuated that the sexologists'
agenda not only was morally questionable but that their engagement for
sex education and enlightenment threatened the social order. Propaga-
tors of sex education, sex research, and birth control viewed overpopu-
lation and the poor living conditions of the disadvantaged classes as a
precursor to war; their educational campaigns were classified as politi-
cally "dangerous" and were persecuted according to the regulations of
the Peace Preservation Law. Because they questioned state policies, sex
researchers and other popularizers of sexual knowledge put their pro-
fessional reputations on the line and continually ran the risk of conflict
with the authorities. Yamamoto Senji, who devoted himself to the sex-
ual enlightenment of the working class in particular and who was ac-
cused of subversive activities in connection with his involvement in the
proletarian movement, eventually paid with his life. Attacks against Ya-
mamoto were to be expected at the end of the 1920S, when he dedicated
himself ever more to the proletarian movement and frequently spoke out
against the Peace Preservation Law. Despite warnings from friends, how-
ever, he rejected their suggestion to employ a bodyguard. After ten years
of activities as a sex researcher and educator, he was fatally stabbed by
a right-wing extremist in 1929 after giving a speech against Japan's
involvement in China. Although they could never prove it, communist
comrades were convinced that the murder had been "carefully planned
by the Tanaka government" (Katayama Sen 1929, quoted in Beckmann
and Okubo 1969: 173; see also Taniguchi 1960: 257).4
Just as the censors defined who would be counted as a communist,
they also decided who and what was to be considered "immoral" or
"obscene." In doing so, they were not interested in the fine differentia-
tions sexologists had made within the large body of writings on sex. The
censors' choice of incriminated publications ignored the boundaries be-
tween "obscene" sexual writing and instructive, scholarly texts that
had been drawn with so much care by Yamamoto and other sexologists.
Throughout the early twentieth century, in fact, sexologists had made
frequent and explicit efforts to dissociate themselves from the commer-
cial interests of popular magazines that packaged sexual issues in sensa-
tionalist stories intended to increase the magazines' sales.
Many sexologists attempted to draw clear-cut lines between their
own agenda and the overly sensational or lighthearted articles in popu-
lar media. Yamamoto and other sexologists strictly opposed the practice
of leaving sexual issues in the hands of dubious print media, "obscene
magazines," and "certain women's magazines," which-in Yamamoto's
opinion-took up sexual perversions or sex scandals mainly for "dirty
motives" (fujun na d6ki) (Yamamoto Senji 1921: 513, 1924b). Others,
however, hoped that readers tempted to buy a magazine because of sen-
sational "true stories," such as, for example, the attempted suicide of a
female homosexual, also would embrace the more matter-of-fact infor-
mation provided in some sexological journals and other works. 5 More-
over, some sexologists, such as Habuto Eiji, for example, increasingly
embraced new commercial opportunities that were opened up by the ex-
panding print media market.
Nonetheless, just as frequently, sexologists were unsuccessful in en-
tirely escaping the accusation of obscenity. Colleagues from established
academic disciplines doubted the respectability of the sexologists' in-
tentions and voiced the concern that sex research sullied the purity of sci-
Breeding the Japanese "Race"
ence. Japanese sexologists shared this problem with their European and
American colleagues. Havelock Ellis, for example, believed that a med-
ical degree behind an author's name served as justification for investi-
gating such a topic, assuring readers that the author 'was not concerned
with prurient interest but rather with helping them cope with problems.
To add to this aura of respectability, most Western treatises on sex
printed in the first half of the twentieth century carried a warning that
they were intended for a medical and professional audience, not for the
general public. However, suspicions remained. When an English edition
of Ellis's work on sexual inversion first appeared, an American reviewer
stated that Ellis was inclined to fill his book with the "pornographic
imaginings of perverted minds rather than cold facts." Similarly, when
William Masters confided that he wanted to do research on human sex-
uality, he was given three pieces of advice: first, he should establish a sci-
entific reputation in some other scientific field before starting any sex re-
search; second, he should secure the sponsorship of a major medical
school or university; and third, he should be at least forty years of age
and preferably married (Bullough 1997:236-238).
Although some sexologists in Japan fulfilled these criteria, censors
were not easily impressed with these superficial signs of respectability.
With increasing frequency, sexological articles were denounced as por-
nography and censored for moral reasons. Sexological lectures were in-
terrupted or prohibited from the outset and classified as a threat to both
the social order and public morals. The censors frequently collapsed
the labels "revolutionary"-or disruptive of the social order, anti-state,
anti-military, or anti-war-and "obscene"-or disruptive of mores,
pornographic, or vulgar. The definition of utterances and writings inju-
rious to public morals remained vague and allowed for largely arbitrary
enforcement by the Special Higher Police.
One judge described morally objectionable publications as writing
that "arouses a sense of disgust, which depicts ugly, vulgar matters-es-
pecially fornication and adultery-too concretely or in such a way as to
provoke or encourage them, or to express sympathy or admiration for
them" (Judge Imamura, quoted in J. Rubin 1984: 88). When printed on
the cover of a journal or magazine, the line "Reproduction of all articles
in this paper is forbidden" (Honshi no kiji wa subete tensai 0 kinzu) or
simply the words "Reproduction ban" (tensaikin) constituted an exis-
tential threat, particularly to smaller papers.
Especially after the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in September
193 I and the establishment of the puppet state Manchukuo in 1932, the
guardians of public morals suspected threats to the social order and

morals in a vast number of areas. Among these were the approval of the
"liberation of wOlnen," the "liberation of the family," and the "critique
of marriage." Another set of problematic activities and thought included
the mere "thematization of sexual desire," the dissemination of "theo-
ries about pregnancy," and what was classified as "neo-Malthusian
assertions." Although the censorship authorities acknowledged that
some of the authors of texts on these themes approved of the official
pronatal population policy, they classified most of them as "frivolous
concessions" (fuhaku na mono) to the zeitgeist (Naimusha keihokyoku
197 6a :22 4)
Whereas the activities of sexologists and other social reforrners were
tolerated or hardly recognized during peacetime, they became subject to
rigid oppression in times of social unrest and instability-i.e., during
the 1920S, especially after the Kanta earthquake of 1923, annually on
May I (International Workers Day), and during the war in the 1930S
and 1940s. By 1937, when the last remaining sexological journal was
discontinued and the militarization of Japanese society had become ever
more blatant, sexologists had dealt with an abundance of hurdles that
the Japanese administration had placed in their way. As discussed in
chapters 3 and 4, they did not rely only on the printed word for the me-
diation of sexual kno~Tledge. Sexologists also made a considerable effort
to reach out to groups that did not read their books and journals by
giving lectures at meetings of the professional associations of doctors,
pharmacists, and teachers, and union meetings, as well as in factories,
schools, and universities. After 1925, they also spoke on radio programs
and made use of every available opportunity to present their agenda
(Nogami 1932). Wherever sexologists had sought and found support for
their sexological program, they also encountered resistance of various
kinds. Every public lecture in the course of nearly two decades was, de-
pending on the audience in question, threatened by police intervention.
As long as they presented their ideas in professional circles, they were
relatively safe from state repression-although frequently reprimanded.
However, serious threats were lnade to the continuation of their publi-
cations, the security of their academic careers, their freedoln, and their
lives, especially when they appealed to the general public in their writ-
ing and lectures. Their endeavors allowed sexual knowledge to reach
ever-greater groups in Japanese society, thus increasingly provoking the
authorities' attention.
In 1931, the censorship authorities in the Home Department noted
with concern that the number of censored books and magazines had
multiplied during the previous years. They acknowledged the general in-
crease of publications and of the numbers of readers but also pointed out
that the production of "sexual desire books" (seiyokuhon) was mainly
responsible for that development (Naimusho keihokyoku 198 I : 3 16).
Censorship could lead to the confiscation of a book or the discontinua-
tion of a journal, and frequent censorship was a threat especially for the
sexological journals, which were- in the documentation of violations
against public morals and social order-categorized as "sexual desire
journals" (seiyoku zasshi).
Sometimes the censors demanded only the replacenlent of the cover,
but more often whole issues were censored because of particular articles
such as, for example, "Women's Sexual Awareness and Men" or "Con-
dom Nonsense" (Sei May 1929 and May 1932). The police's justifica-
tion of the confiscation of sexological journals varied only slightly. They
acknowledged that Sexuality, for example, frequently had discussed the
dangers of venereal diseases, but they claimed that the many "obscene"
articles violated the sense of "proper morals" (Naimusho keihokyoku
1976b:214-2I 5)
Generally, censorship practices varied according to the type of publi-
cation, the readership, the circulation numbers, and influence of the so-
cial climate at a given point in time, and the distribution and extent of
the incriminating content. Typically, political journals faced more re-
straint than academic ones and those with a broader readership were
more prone to censorship than those that targeted a specialized audi-
ence. Of ten newspaper and magazine categories examined by the cen-
sors between 1929 and 193 I, literary magazines and "sexual desire
journals" were most frequently censored. Viewed as an expression of a
psychologically confused time, one that commonly was referred to as an
era of heightened eroticism and the prevalence of the grotesque and non-
sensical (ero guro nansensu), journals that focused on sexual issues were
particularly endangered.
Several sexological journals directed at an educated lay audience
were discontinued as a result of censorship, while only one academic
journal was censored during those years. Within a few years, censorship
cases totaled 102. Thirty of these cases affected "sexual desire jour-
nals." 6 Repeated prohibitions to reproduce and distribute certain issues
led to the end of the journal Sexuality. When Akiyama Yoshio, the edi-
tor of Sexuality, gave up the production of the journal, it had been cen-
sored seventeen times within a few years. Originally approved as a "pro-
fessional journal" by the authorities, Sexuality had to deal repeatedly

with censorship and confiscation that targeted literary contributions,
such as sexual tales, in particular, but also stories about personal sexual
experiences and scholarly essays. Yamamoto Senji designed his journal
Sex and Society as a forum for the publication of the results of sex re-
search and other instructive articles in order to educate the masses. His
engagement for sex education and sex research and his involvement in
both the birth control movement and the labor movenlent, however,
made him a target of censorship and frequent police observation on
both moral and political grounds.
Magazines and journals directed at youth and laborers seem to have
been observed most closely, but newspapers and magazines with high
circulation numbers were checked especially carefully, while those of
smaller, sometimes n10re radical groups possibly were overlooked
(Kasza 1988: 33 -3 5). Moreover, the popularity of the publisher or au-
thor and the circulation numbers played an important role in being
targeted by censors. Yamamoto Senji and Abe Isoo, for example, were
public men, well known fronl their articles in daily papers. Hence, their
activities were observed more carefully.
During the early 1930S, newspapers and magazines that generally
were considered reputable were censored or confiscated if they con-
tained articles with dubious sexual content. Articles that were perceived
as violations of the censorship regulations were prohibited from being
printed, and sometimes entire editions of a book or periodical could
be affected by a printing ban (Kasza 1988: 172-174). Women's Review
had to remove an article entitled "Advice on Life from a Thousand and
One Nights" (Fujin Karon November 1933), and Popular Medicine had
to withdraw "Story of an Unsuccessful Wedding Night" (Tsuzoku Igaku
January 1934). Similarly, Research in Sexology, founded in 1936 by Ota
Tenrei, had to be discontinued after scarcely one year in existence when
it changed its course from that of a scholarly journal to one that tar-
geted an educated lay audience and no longer addressed an exclusively
academic readership. In the first three editions of Research in Sexol-
ogy, the results of the sex surveys carried out by Yamamoto and Yasuda
were printed anonymously as a "Collection of Material on Sex Educa-
tion" (Seikyoiku shiryoshu). The often-recurring word "masturbation"
prompted the prohibition of the journal. Research in Sexology was the
last sexological journal to disappear under the pressure of legislative
control (Yasuda 1. 1955: 28 4).
The censors increasingly sharpened their instruments and by the mid-
160 Breeding the Japanese "Race"
I 9 3 as, four categories of periodicals, in addition to ordinary news-

papers, were examined. These four categories included "sexual desire
journals," entertainment magazines, mass-circulation magazines, and
women's magazines. Ota Tenrei described new means of contraception,
Sawada Junjiro introduced new sex research, and Kikuchi Kan contem-
plated love and marriage. All of them faced censorship at some time
or another (Naimusho keihokyoku 1976b:192-196). The subtle and
sometimes not-so-subtle differences between prescriptions for healing
venereal diseases, essays about sexuality and puberty, adaptations of The
Thousand and One Nights, and modified versions of The Decameron or
the Kama Sutra mattered less and less to the censors, who were on the
lookout for incriminating material that violated what they saw as good
public morals (Naimusho keihokyoku 1976a:284-304).
Prior to I9 38, censorship was neither consistent nor foolproof. In ad-
dition to the criteria described above, individual judgments must have
played a major role in what was censored and what was not. Miyatake
Gaikotsu (I867-1955), journalist and prominent satirist, printed parts
of two different sketches of female nudes in his Humor Newspaper (Kok-
kei Shinbun), and in the accompanying text ridiculed the arbitrariness
of the censorship authorities. Besides individual differences in the cen-
sors' judgments, Miyatake suggested, censorship depended on how
much a newspaper's or magazine's general orientation bothered the au-
thorities: "Take pleasure in the unholy nudes (fushinsei naru rataiga)
in number I I 3, the present edition. The nudes, which appeared in the
Osaka Shinpo, a paper with special ties to the Home Department, were
not subjected to a fine. However, when the Kokkei Shinbun does not
scatter their nudes [throughout the magazine, rather than reproducing
them as one complete image], they are fined. What irony!" (Kokkei Shin-
bun 20 April 1906: editorial).
Publishers and presses, however, knew how to apply certain strate-
gies to escape censorship, and the officials in the Home Department
alerted their officers to "secret publications" of incriminated material
and other tricks that publishers used to circumvent the censors' verdict.
They held back certain articles and did not present them at preview
meetings. They changed the titles of problematic articles slightly or
printed the same essays with different titles. Some publishers also took
on the risk of even higher fines and printed articles that had been cen-
sored. Others repealed the censured articles but nonetheless described
those articles that had been censured from the last edition in the next
edition of their magazine. Women's Review, for example, frequently re-
sponded to censorship by printing critical statements on censorship pol-

icy in the subsequent issue of the magazine (Shin1anaka 1921), and it is
likely that magazine editors used the label "scandalous" of a censored
article to their own commercial advantage in order to increase sales
figures.
When the conflict with China escalated, the censorship regulations
were tightened again. Previously, publishers of newspapers and maga-
zines \vere not given direct guidelines for publications, but were pro-
vided with commentaries about very specific events. Whereas until 1938
incriminated publications or parts of publications comrTIonly were cen-
sored after their publication, now entire texts prepared for publication
had to be presented to the censors for approval. These obligatory pre-
views marked the transformation from direct to indirect censorship,
paving the way for the self-censorship of broadcasting corporations and
other media (J. Rubin 1984; Kasza 1988). The new guidelines of 1938
prescribed a more rigid censorship of women's and "entertainment mag-
azines" (goraku zasshi)~ and more than ever before affected novels clas-
sified as "vulgar." Among the works censored, novels that described the
extramarital love affairs of married women, negated the ideal of pre-
marital female chastity, or dealt with lovers' suicide pacts were high on
the list (see also Robertson 1999). Others included confessions related
to sexual desire and similar provocative articles related to sexual mat-
ters, which were declared to have a "bad influence on women's upbring-
ing." Typical examples of stories prone to censorship were vivid de-
scriptions of "The Misfortune of the Inability to Experience Sexual
Satisfaction," the "Difference between Virgins and Non-virgins" and
"Secret Hygiene Instructions for Newlyweds," as well as articles about
sexual hygiene in which venereal diseases or contraceptive methods
were mentioned.
RACIAL HYGIENE
Closely tied to prewar and wartime censorship was the increasing cur-
rency of racial hygienic thought that forcefully contradicted the claims
of some sexologists, feminists, and other social reformers who had pro-
moted the legalization of contraception and birth control and the view
that sexuality should be considered an individual, private matter that
should not be controlled by the state. The escalating conflict with China
and its effects contributed to a political climate that advanced a popula-
tion policy based on a set of claims that were rooted in social medicine,
social biology, biometrics, and genetics, and furthered the disintegration

of the sexological project. Sexologists had been concerned with the ed-
ucation of the wider public and assumed that "correct" sexual knowl-
edge would also lead to "correct" sexual behavior. The Japanese ad-
ministration, however, under the auspices of first the Home Department
and after I937 the Ministry of Health and Welfare, pushed for state-
controlled pronatalist population policies at the onset of what promised
to be a long war that would demand enormous manpower. These poli-
cies, which were established at the end of the I930S and remained an im-
portant part of population policies since, came to include elements of
both negative and positive eugenics under the name "racial hygiene"
(minzoku eisei).
From 1924 on, several eugenics organizations were founded that
generated a number of debates on theories of heredity. Only one organi-
zation, however, was successful at formulating concrete policies: the
Japanese Association of Racial Hygiene (Nihon Minzoku Eisei Ky6kai),
founded by Nagai Hisomu in I930. In an attempt to design a set of con-
crete population policies, the members of the association declared that
racial hygiene policies would solve the problems that had been ad-
dressed throughout the Taisho and early Sh6wa eras as sexual and lor so-
cial issues by sexologists and other social reformers. In Nagai's view, sex
and reproduction were exclusively intended to serve the "improvement
of the race" (jinshu kaizen).7 In order to clearly differentiate the associ-
ation's project from elements of eugenic thought discussed since the late
nineteenth century under the guise of improvement of the national body,
Nagai and other members of the group abandoned the term "eugenics"
(yuseigaku), which had been used by a diverse group of reformers, and
created a new name, "racial hygiene" (minzoku eiseigaku), an adapta-
tion of the German Rassenhygiene (Suzuki Z. 1983: 148; see also Ot-
subo and Bartholomew 1998: 556).8
An audience of more than 1,000, including professionals from medi-
cine, education, and politics, the home minister and the minister of
education, the director of the Academy of Science and several Shinto
priests, attended the first meeting in Hibiya, Tokyo. The association's
mission statement dismissed "neo-Malthusian Sangerism" as a "world-
wide plague" that undermined the "biological vitality of the cultured
races." It appealed to responsible representatives of racial hygiene, so-
cial medicine, cultural history, and social politics on behalf of the future
of the Japanese people. The declaration also emphasized that Japan must
not remain outside this worldwide trend of "neo-Malthusian Sanger-
ism" and promoted the appropriation of birth control that had been so
"urgently demanded by a great number of people" in order to improve
the Japanese race. The Japanese Association of Racial Hygiene had been
set up, the statenlent concluded, in order to fulfill these wishes (see Su-
zuki Z. 19 8 3: 145).
Borrowing from diverse sources-including an earlier petition of
the Japanese Women's Alliance for Birth Control, which I discussed in
chapter 4, as well as national-socialist legislation and language-Nagai
proposed several measures. He deen1ed it necessary to sterilize "inferior
persons" (rettosha) and people with hereditary diseases in order to
physically and nlentally improve the Japanese race, and he promoted
the enactment of a sterilization law. The association also proposed the
promotion of "eugenic marriages" (yusei kekkon) through marriage
consultation offices in order to advance the proper "breeding of the Jap-
anese race" (Nihon minzoku no zoshoku) -under the control of eu-
genicists. The prohibition of every means and method of birth control
that depended on the individual woman's desire to prevent contracep-
tion and birth complemented the set of policies that worked to tighten
the criminalization of contraception and abortion beyond the bound-
aries of racial hygienist reasoning.
Following Nagai's recommendation, a package of regulations against
harmful contraceptives (Yugai hinin kigu torishimari) was irnplenlented,
and contraceptives found in the possession of birth control activists were
confiscated (Fujime 1986: 9 I). Doctors, midwives, and other profession-
als (and nonprofessionals) who were accused of violating the abortion
law were arrested and imprisoned. In 1933, midwife Shibahara Urako
was arrested; she was politically aligned with socialists and communists
and indicted for assisting in fifteen different abortions, for which she was
punished with a one-year sentence (Fujime 1993).9 In 1934, the police
interrogated Majima Yutaka (Ishizaki 1992: 104). And in December
1937, Ishimoto was arrested for her "communist activities," her propa-
gation of birth control, and her critique of the Japanese aggression in
China. After her release two weeks later, she was placed under house
arrest and forbidden to participate in any type of public activity (see
M. Beard 1953; 167-173).
At another meeting, the members of the Association of Racial Hy-
giene debated a set of five policies to further its goals: the promotion of
racial hygienist thought; the execution of racial hygienic surveys and the
establishlnent of a state-sponsored research institute; the establishment
of measures for the prevention of the "poisoning of the race"; the pro-
motion of the reproduction of healthy people according to racial hy-

gienist criteria; and the establishment of measures such as isolation, eu-
genic marriage, abortion, castration, and sterilization in order to en-
hance genetic health and eradicate" bad genes." All of these goals were
to be implemented and executed under the control of the Association of
Racial Hygiene (Matsubara 2000: 177-178; Suzuki Z. 19 8 3: 159).
In 1934 and repeatedly throughout the remainder of the 1930S, Na-
gai and other eugenicists submitted drafts of a sterilization law to the
Bureau of Hygiene in the Home Department. However, their proposals
continued to provoke substantial criticism and to meet with rejection.
Geneticists like Komai Taku, for example, insisted that from the view-
point of population genetics, sterilization would be entirely worthless.
Other geneticists warned that research in genetics was not advanced
enough for political and legal application. Psychiatrists objected to the
enactment of the law, insisting that it would encourage prejudice against
the mentally ill. Social reformers on the Left remained unconvinced that
people with "bad bodies" or "bad minds" were useless or even harmful
to society. After all, some pointed out, many of the most successful Jap-
anese poets and artists shared a weak constitution. Critics of eugenic
policies warned that it would prompt the extinction of exceptional
people with special talents such as scientists, religious leaders, and art-
ists, because racial hygienist measures were based on an overly simplis-
tic concept of the human. They argued that these exceptionally gifted,
albeit physically weak, people did not produce many children anyway
and few started a family at all (Matsubara 1998: 191).
Representatives of the Left also were wary of the law because it tack-
led in a biological manner what they perceived to be problems of eco-
nomic inequity. Yasuda Tokutaro, Yamamoto Senji's former comrade,
for example, protested the principles of the sterilization law because he
viewed crime and mental illness as typical deplorable conditions of cap-
italist societies. In his view, these conditions could be eliminated not
by improving the "human material" through racial hygiene policies but
only by socioeconomic reforms. Unintentionally playing into the hands
of the association, which sought scientific recognition and political in-
fluence, Yasuda shared another argument with a more cautious group of
geneticists. Genetic research, Yasuda declared, had yet to be developed
well enough to be transformed into policies. This lack of scientific evi-
dence for the likelihood of inheriting "inferior dispositions" was ac-
knowledged even to some extent by those who demanded policies based
on racial hygienist concepts. Nagai and other members of the Associa-
tion of Racial Hygiene pushed for a state-sponsored eugenics research

institute similar to the Swedish eugenics laboratory he had visited in Upp-
sala. io Thus Yasuda's latter concern was in a way shared-if for differ-
ent reasons-by the leaders of the association, who called for the estab-
lishment of a research institute for racial hygiene, the dissemination of
racial hygienic knowledge, and influence in policy matters. Other op-
ponents of the law attacked racial hygienists from yet another perspec-
tive, insisting that the Japanese people were so unique they could not be
treated like animals or other peoples (Suzuki Z. 1983: 162).
Contested as it was, racial hygiene gained considerable ground, and
in November I938, the Eugenics Section in the Ministry of Health and
Welfare installed a Racial Hygiene Study Group (Minzoku Eisei Ken-
kyukai). The study group began under the newly created term minzoku
yusei to debate policies for both increasing the reproduction of "supe-
rior healthy" (yuryo kenzen) people and preventing the reproduction
of people classified as "inferior" (retsuakusha or rettosha). The Eugen-
ics Section's tasks covered issues of racial hygiene, mental diseases,
"chronic intoxication," including alcoholism, and chronic diseases, in-
cluding beriberi and cancer, venereal diseases, and leprosy Uapan Times
and Mail I937, I938; Matsubara 2000: 176--I77).
The vice president of the Association of Racial Hygiene, Koya Yoshio,
supported Nagai in transforming the goals of the association into po-
litical measures. A professor of medicine at the Institute of Hygiene of
the Kanazawa Medical University, Koya had begun to publish the bi-
lingual periodical Racial Biological Research (Minzoku Eiseigaku
Kenkyu-Rassenbiologische Untersuchungen) in 1936. The journal
printed exclusively results of biometrical, sociobiological, and physio-
anthropological studies, which were carried out by Koya and his col-
laborators at the Institute of Hygiene. Typical contributions dealt with
the analysis of fertility according to social class, the heredity of physical
traits, racial biological studies of the rural versus the urban population
in Japan, and the physical condition of Japan's schoolchildren. i1
In I939, two years after the founding of the association, Koya began
to take on various functions in different departments of the Ministry of
Health and Welfare. Like Nagai, Koya sympathized with Germany's na-
tional-socialist politics. Under his leadership, the Association of Racial
Hygiene developed an increasingly intimate relationship with the Min-
istry of Health and Welfare, foreshadowing the almost complete "colo-
nial ruling apparatus" over sex and sexuality and introducing processes
of co-option that were perfected in the immediate postwar era. At the as-
sociation's annual conferences between 1940 and 1942, more than a

third of the participants came from various departments of the ministry.
Meetings and conferences initially had been held at universities. From
1943 on, however, the twelfth and subsequent conferences took place in
the Ministry of Health and Welfare's own research institute. An in-
creasing number of ministerial officials published articles in the associa-
tion's periodical, and eventually they wrote all contributions (Oguma
1995: 25 1 - 2 53).
Several other attempts at pushing through a bill for the eugenic pro-
tection of the Japanese race (Nihon minzoku yusei hogo hoan) also
failed until eventually, in 1940, the National Eugenic Law (Kokumin Yii-
seiho) was passed with the support of the Bureau of Prevention (Yobo-
kyoku) in the Ministry of Health and Welfare (established in 1938)
and put into effect in July 1941.12 The sterilization law was modeled
after the first German racial hygienist law of 14 July 1933, the Law on
Preventing Hereditarily III Progeny (Gesetz zur Verhutung erbkranken
Nachwuchses), which in turn, as Stefan Kiihl (1994: 23) has argued,
had grown out of earlier American models. Members of the Prussian
Health Council drew on a Swiss law as well as on existing sterilization
laws in twenty-four states of the United States. In Germany, however,
the law went far beyond the American statutes. Physicians were required
to report all "unfit" people to the hundreds of hereditary health courts
established to adjudicate the German procreational future. Within three
years, German authorities sterilized some 225,000 people, ten times the
number treated in the previous thirty years in the United States (Kevles
1985: 116 -1 17) and four hundred times the number of Japanese steril-
izations until the end of World War II (Koseisho imukyoku 1955: 828).
The Japanese sterilization law allowed the government to order the
sterilization of people with hereditary illnesses, but, in contrast to the
situation in Germany, the health and welfare minister agreed not to en-
force compulsory sterilization, although the compulsory sterilization
clause was not deleted from the bill. The five subcategories of illnesses
included hereditary mental illness, hereditary mental deficiency, severe
and malignant hereditary personality disorder, severe and malignant
hereditary physical ailment, and severe hereditary deformity (Matsub-
ara 1998:191; Ota T. 1976:319; Oguma 1995:249-25).13 Between
1941 and 1947, 538 people (217 men and 321 women) were sterilized
for eugenic reasons (Koseisho imukyoku 1955 : 828).
In his account of the law's history, Ota Tenrei noted that this radical
population control policy was enforced to a fairly limited extent because
after 1941 most men were on the front, and men who had remained at
home ,vere either too old or too young for reproduction (Ota T. 1976:
I 59). However, considering that the majority of sterilizations during the
first half of the 1940S were carried out on women and-after I948,
when the National Eugenic Law was modified and renamed the Eugenic
Protection Law-sterilizations were performed almost exclusively on
women (Koya 1957), Ota's explanation is unsatisfactory. There were in-
deed other reasons for the limited application of the sterilization policy
in Japan. Perhaps most importantly, the law ran counter to other popu-
lation policies already in place. In order to achieve the strategic militarist
goals of the pronatalist state, the population was to be increased by one-
third, to 100 million persons, somewhat diminishing support for steril-
ization as a eugenic strategy. Thus enforcement of compulsory steriliza-
tion was prevented in part because of policymakers' lack of enthusiasm
(Robertson 2001).
Another reason may have been the low numbers of institutionalized
mentally ill and mentally retarded, who were the main targets of the law.
As the most common measure was detention at the patient's home, most
of them were out of psychiatric and governmental control. Moreover, af-
ter Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor in December 194 I and particularly
after the devastating battle of Midway in June 1942, the war situation
must have further undermined the efforts of propagators of racial hy-
gienist policies (Matsubara 1998: I91-192, 2000: 179-180). The sig-
nificance of the law, then, lay not in its efficiency but in its embedded-
ness in an entire set of measures that were based on the five propositions
the Association of Racial Hygiene in the Ministry of Health and Welfare
had worked out. These measures reinforced the central effect of the Na-
tional Eugenic Law-not only to prevent people with certain diseases
fron1 reproducing but also to entice healthy people to reproduce fre-
quently and to prevent them from practicing birth control and having
abortions.
A system that was to promote and advise people on eugenically sound
marriages had been put in place by the early I930S. State-sponsored
consultation offices for eugenic marriages (yusei kekkon sodansho) had
been established in order to encourage members of the younger genera-
tion to marry a partner with a sound genetic makeup as early as pos-
sible. Designed to increase women's desire to bear children, another
element of the policy was introduced in 1939. Families with more than
ten children were given awards similar to the German Mutterkreuz, and
mother-child health care policies were introduced. By August 1939, the
r68 Breeding the Japanese "Race"
award had been given to 23,000 families, and in 1940 alone, 10,336
families were honored. In 1942, another 2,200 families received the
award. By April 194I, the Japanese government had begun to award a
prize of 20 yen, a good third of many households' monthly income, for
every newborn (Enjoji I942; Wada 1993: 17 2 ; Kato Toshinobu 1978 : 7).
Despite these efforts, the net population increase in mainland Japan
fell from 1.07 million in 1940 and 1.12 million in 1941 to 504,000
in 1944.14
In 1941, the National Eugenic Federation (Kokumin Yiisei Renmei)
was established and provided with a budget that facilitated the printing
of an instructive pamphlet, Explanatory Diagram of National Eugenics.
In addition to the provisions of the law, restrictions on marriage be-
tween people with hereditary and venereal diseases also were considered
but not established, due to persisting doubts among professionals about
their usefulness. In 1942, the Ministry of Health and Welfare merged its
National Research Institute of Population Problems (Jinko Mondai
Kenkyujo, established in 1939) with its Welfare Division in an attempt
to better research racial hygienics, psychiatry, eugenics, and eugenic
policies (Matsubara 2000: 17 8 -179).
VIRILE WARRIORS, FERTILE WOMBS
Throughout the 1930S and early 1940s, the demands of the imperialist
state that were powerfully expressed in pronatalist and racial hygienist
population policy were echoed in popular media. Underlining the offi-
cial policy of population growth and territorial expansion, popular me-
dia linked economic success to reproductive capabilities and military
prowess to sexual potency. By doing so, they suggested a congruence be-
tween the empire's expansive capabilities, women's reproductive capac-
ity, and men's sexual potency. The rigor of imperialist aggression and
propaganda was curiously reflected in the propagation and marketing of
products that had long been available but were now advertised as reme-
dies that improved sexual and reproductive functioning and enhanced
the health and physical fitness as well as the fighting spirit of Japanese
men (Tsuzoku Igaku July 1942: 80). In certain ways, medical advertis-
ing and imperialist propaganda refashioned the early Meiji cry for the
defense of the nation through the defense of men's bodies. In a twofold
move of the remilitarization of sexuality and the sexualization of war,
early Sh6wa ideologues as well as marketing professionals aligned (fe-
male) reproductivity and (male) sexual energy with practices of inva-

sion, aggression, and war.
Advertisements for a great variety of hormone products began to oc-
cupy the pages of professional and nonprofessional journals and news-
papers and gradually pushed aside those for contraceptives and other
means of individually manageable birth control methods. The rise of
pharmaceutical companies, which were interested in marketing hor-
monal extracts, was widely celebrated in the Japanese media and seemed
to emulate Japan's militarist effort during the 1930S and early 1940S.15
This commercialization and commodification of pronatalist ideology
through potency-enhancing drugs further challenged the sexological
project in ways different from both censorship and racial hygiene. Rep-
resentations of commodified pronatalist ideology disrupted the author-
ity on sexual knowledge that sexologists had claimed for themselves.
Sexologists who strove to achieve what they called the "liberation of
sex" from both traditional, nonscientific beliefs and state control were
increasingly perceived as a threat to the colonialist and militarist state,
but they also lost ground in the public arena that they had so aggres-
sively pursued since the Taish6 era.
Addressing the necessity of medically enhanced sexual potency and
reproductive activity, articles and advertisements for hormone medica-
tion and "aphrodisiacs of perpetual youth" ((uro kyoseiyaku) occupied
the pages of newspapers and periodicals throughout the 1930S and early
1940s. Family and household magazines, midwifery and obstetrics-gy-
necology journals, and women's, popular medical, and general-interest
magazines fed anxieties that the reproductive apparatus of Japanese
women might be impaired, resulting in hysteria, frigidity, or infertility.
Similarly, they fueled anxieties that Japanese men's genitalia might not
be fully developed and that their sexual potency might be challenged
by nonreproductive sexual practices, delayed marriage, and overwork.
While "frigidity" was portrayed as an exclusively female problem, "hys-
teria" was imagined as a condition that could haunt men or women.
Hence, some of these hormone extracts were recommended for con-
sumption by both sexes.
In the imagination of medical doctors, women's circulating blood
and hormones became "chemical messengers" of femininity (Rousseau
1998:259), whereas "male hormones" were marketed to improve male
physical strength and heal mental fatigue as well as treat a long list of
other ailments, including impotence, the decline of sexual potency, se-
nility, loss of stamina, hysteria, and neurasthenia. In 1922, the news-
paper Japan and the Japanese (Nihon oyobi NihonjinJ began to run
a one-page advertisement for the hormonal product Tokkapin (Nihon
oyohi Nihonjin I May 1922: advertisement section). It appeared fre-
quently throughout the 1920S, and other magazines and newspapers
began to advertise the same product and to print advertisements for sim-
ilar hormone treatments. Pharmacies profited from selling dubious de-
vices and hormone products named Reben (Tsuzoku igaku September
1925), Oikarubin Goto (Tsuzoku igaku September 1925), Tokkapin
(Tsuzoku igaku January 1927), Komuhorumon (Tsuzoku igaku March
19 2 9), and Andorosuchin (Tsuzoku igaku February 1937), all of which
supposedly cured the ailments mentioned above. 16
In its 1927 January issue, Popular Medicine began to run an illus-
trated version of the advertisement for Tokkapin (see figure II), which
reflected some of the themes central to the times. In the illustration, a
young man with elongated legs stands in a Superman-like pose while
holding up a packet of the product. Wearing a Western-style business
suit and a bow tie, he stands on a whole pile of Tokkapin packets.
Through his legs and behind him, the readers of Popular Medicine had
a glimpse of the smoking chimney of a factory, in front of which a few
rickshaw men were on their way to meet customers. The young, suc-
cessful, male, white-collar worker in the advertisement apparently was
able-in addition to all of his professional achievements-to strengthen
the functions of his genitalia and increase his energy in general simply
by taking Tokkapin (Tsuzoku Igaku January 1927). Two years later,
in its October issue, the same magazine praised healing methods for
neurasthenia, which had become an umbrella term for all of the afore-
mentioned disturbances of male (sexual) potency.l? In 1942, the imag-
ery of hormone products that targeted a male clientele had shifted from
the faceless businessman to the warrior sporting a headband that fea-
tured the Japanese national flag, an image similar to the suicide pilot de-
pictions of the last years of World War II (Tsuzoku Igaku July 1942: 80).
Advertisements for hormone extracts for the treatment of "sexual de-
fects" and the "incomplete development of the genitalia" claimed that
injections and other complicated methods of treatment finally had be-
come unnecessary. Instead, it was announced, the medical world wel-
comed and praised new methods of treatment for sexual neurasthenia,
the unsatisfactory development of the sexual organs, atrichia, frigidity,
apathy, and other disorders. Samples of the products could be ordered
by sending 2 sen in postage stamps to the Japanese Society for Popular
.
"."1ft". IIJtRhII
.-:::!.(:.... n
II =1-. T
Figure I I. Advertisement featuring a man on Tokkapin tablets

from the January 1927 issue of Popular Medicine. Used with the
kind permission of the Kyoto Ika Daigaku Library.
Medicine (Nihon Tsuzoku Igakkai) in Osaka, which published Popular

Medicine (Tsuzoku Igaku October 1933 : 15 6 ).
Some pharmacies advertised hormone products directly. A certain
Shisando Pharmacy in Tokyo, for example, sold hormone tablets that
supposedly healed premature ejaculation, nocturnal emissions, frigidity,
a decline in sexual desire, and a number of other disorders. Experts who
were identified as medical doctors explained the "scientific" methods
17 2 Breeding the Japanese "Race"
used in the production of the medications. They pointed out that the
substance for the tablets was extracted scientifically from the genital
glands of healthy bulls, and claimed that the results of recent research in
internal medicine showed the efficiency of the hormone in the treatment
of sexual neurasthenia. Others claimed that the treatment was success-
ful for improving an unsatisfactory sex life.
In numerous similar advertisements, physicians described the suc-
cessful treatment of (typically married) men who felt incapable of hav-
ing a satisfactory sex life. The advertisements' texts commonly pointed
out that the medication did not cause dependency, and one can imagine
that those who could afford it might have taken more than the recom-
mended number of tablets, eventually spending a small fortune. The
products were sold at exorbitantly high prices and hormone treatment
was a luxury for most customers. At a time when the monthly income
of a middle-class household was 60-70 yen and many worker house-
holds had to scrape by with less than 50 yen (Okuda 1925; Ishimoto
1935; Shinohara 1967), the monthly supply of hormone tablets cost
between 4.5 and 7 yen (Tsuzoku Igaku August 1933: 12 4, January
193 8 : 11 4).
Hormone products that supposedly enhanced sexual potency and
physical strength and that cured sexual malfunctions commonly tar-
geted a male clientele. While sexual intercourse between men and
women was rarely mentioned explicitly, many advertisements featured a
woman's face or other parts of a woman's body, suggesting why noctur-
nal emission, premature ejaculation, neurasthenic ailments, or impo-
tence should be cured. Images of female body parts, a suggestively lifted
skirt, provocatively crossed bare legs, or a woman's smiling face repre-
sented an imaginary sexual counterpart. These images also reinforced
the twofold message implicit in the texts, namely that nonreproductive
sex was a waste of energy, and that men's sexual desire was to be shared
with women (see figures 12, 13, and 14).
The market for hormone-based products that targeted women may
have been even larger than that for products for men. By the mid-1930S,
hormone-based cosmetic products such as tonics and creams (horumon
keishosui) promising to rejuvenate female facial skin hit the advertise-
ment sections of women's magazines (see, e.g., Shinjoen March 1937:
99; Fujin Koron March 1935: 32 and advertisement section). However,
magazines frequently also advertised medication for menstrual irregu-
larity, infertility, hysteria, and frigidity, among other female physical
-c l., ~ J111 ;,:C }L* It!" (1) f1L* 13 WJ
-C.1bAjij"i="i'ii"Q5Ii'i"ii
........,~ __...w .................._ .........................._ ............ _.~~_ .... ~ ......
Figure 12. Androstin (Andorosuchin in Japanese) was just one of

many hormone products that were advertised in magazines and
newspapers from the late 1920S onward. This advertisement is from
the March 1937 issue of Popular Medicine. Used with the kind per-
mission of the Kyoto Ika Daigaku Library.
Figure 13. Advertisement for Chireorupin

from the December 1933 issue of Popular
Medicine. The text advertises Chireorupin
as a treatment for sexual neurasthenia,
premature ejaculation, nocturnal emis-
sions, and a number of other sexual prob-
lems. Used with the kind permission of
the Kyoto Ika Daigaku Library.
impairments. In these magazines at least, medical doctors were preoc-

cupied with married women's sexual functioning almost exclusively in
the context of ensuring their reproductive capabilities, thus reinforcing
earlier claims of the uterus as a vehicle of empire building. Medical en-
cyclopedias for home use perhaps best represent this attitude. Such en-
cyclopedias were frequently distributed to the middle- and upper-class
readers of women's magazines. Supplements to the widely read maga-
zine Women's Club (Fujin Kurabu) included the Hygiene Reader for
Women and the Medical Household Encyclopedia for Nursing and
'i-
~, ~'~,~
r
i*
.. .'.. . , "
,--- .~.-.--,~->-.>----
_ .. A..,..._ "" - , - -
Figure 14. Advertisement for Bunpireshon from the April 1937 issue
of Popular Medicine. Among other things, the advertisement promises
that Bunpireshon will cure "premature ejaculation caused by neuras-
thenia that has resulted from masturbation during youth." Used with
the kind permission of the Kyoto Ika Daigaku Library.
Healing in 1933 and 1937, respectively. In 1937, the Hygiene Reader

for Daughters, Wives, and Mothers was distributed to the readers of the
Housewife's Companion (Shufu no Tomo). And in 1934, Women's Club
subscribers received such a book with the June issue, a supplement of
more than 400 pages entitled Household Medical Encyclopedia for
Nursing and Healing Methods (Kango to ryoho: Katei iten}.18
The authors of the encyclopedia were medical doctors, some of whom
served as consultants to advice columns in popular medical journals and
household magazines. The encyclopedia contained sections on all kinds
of medical fields and health problems, which included but were not lim-
ited to pediatrics, the cerebral nerve system, dermatology, urology, ob-
stetrics and gynecology, nursing at home, hygiene for girls, and hygiene
in matrimony.19 In the section on hygiene in matrimony (kekkon eisel)-,
a husband's excessive sexual desire was discussed as a problem wives
might have to deal with. Takeuchi Shigeyo, a prominent and politically
influential medical doctor and eugenicist, outlined several scenarios.20
As most women married late, Takeuchi suggested, unbalanced sexual
needs might be less common than they had been previously. However, if
it turned out that a wife was simply too small physically for her hus-
band, she could not be helped but might have to introduce a mistress to
him. Takeuchi emphasized that both partners should share their sexual
satisfaction and that a woman should not accept her husband's pleasure
while not feeling any herself. Takeuchi also alerted her readers to worry
about suffering from frigidity if a lack of sexual pleasure on their side
became permanent. Frigidity would be diagnosed if the woman had not
felt any sexual pleasure from the very beginning of her relationship or
if she had become ill and ceased to have sexual feelings (Takeuchi S.
1934:41).
Takeuchi noted that among the causes of frigidity were anatomical
problems, uterine infections, less than fully developed sexual organs,
and severe nervous diseases. The pain caused by these ailments would
psychologically influence the relationship between husband and wife,
eventually resulting in the wife's frigidity. If the husband regularly
reached climax before his wife did, this condition also was to be diag-
nosed as a form of the wife's frigidity. In any of these cases, frigidity
would harm the relationship; therefore Takeuchi urged readers of the
encyclopedia to see a doctor immediately if they suffered from any of
these symptoms. Sexual satisfaction was considered important for both
partners, not for pleasure's sake, but because it was believed to have if
not a decisive, at least a positive impact on conception and reproduction.
Hence, the enhancement of physical strength and in particular of male

virility and fentale sexual functioning would guarantee successful mari-
tal relations, leading to frequent pregnancies and births and, by impli-
cation, a prosperous, powerful empire (Takeuchi S. 1934:41-402).21
ENDURING LEGACIES OF THE

COLONIAL RULING APPARATUS OF SEX
The aggressively pro nata list tone was quickly dropped from the pages of
popular medical journals and other publications after the end of World
War II, but strains of eugenic thinking about the human body, health,
and sexuality were reinforced during the 1950 and 1960s and have
proved relatively resilient to radical changes ever since. Despite impor-
tant legal changes made after World War II, eugenic thought and prac-
tice continued to govern decisions by physicians and potential parents.
The wartime sterilization legislation and other pronatalist efforts were
partly abolished and the law was renamed the Eugenic Protection Lavv
(Yiisei hogo ho) in 1948. 22 Women were no longer "coerced to bear chil-
dren" (shussan a kyoyo), but sterilizations still could be performed by
order of a physician even if the concerned person and/or her or his part-
ner disagreed with the physician's verdict (Date 195 I b:42; Muramatsu
I95 5, I9 60). Other components, such as discouraging the transmission
of "bad genes" to offspring, remained intact as well.
According to Article I4 of the revised law, a woman seeking an abor-
tion qualified if she or her spouse had a mental illness, mental deficiency,
psychopathic disorder, hereditary physical ailment, or hereditary defor-
mity; if a blood relative within the fourth degree of consanguinity to the
woman in question or that woman's spouse had a hereditary mental ill-
ness, hereditary mental deficiency, hereditary psychopathic disorder,
hereditary physical ailment, or hereditary physical deformity; if either
spouse suffered from leprosy; if the continuation of pregnancy or child-
birth was likely to seriously harm the mother's health, directly or indi-
rectly (i.e., by reducing her economic status); and if pregnancy resulted
from rape due to assault, coercion, or an inability to offer resistance or
refusal (Norgren 1998: 61-62, 2001: I49).
Eugenic concepts also reappeared in popular household literature of
the 195 os. According to instructive hygiene literature of the 195 os such
as the Hygiene Encyclopedia for Daughters, Wives, and Mothers (Mu-
sume to tsulna to haha no eisei hyakkazenshu), for example, the ideal
\voman had to fulfill four criteria. She was supposed to be "healthy,
equipped with a well-developed body, free of bad genes, and able to

raise children and manage a household" (Date I95 Ib:28}.23 Echoing
wartime notions of "eugenic marriages," a medical doctor explained in
the same encyclopedia that "it was known that maternal genes were
more influential than paternal ones for the development of a child.
Bluntly put," he explained that "this is because at the beginning the ma-
ternal body and the child are one. Genes can be carriers of diseases-
most importantly, mental diseases, but of all kinds of other diseases as
well. They are difficult to detect but if many relatives [of a potential
spouse] suffer from certain diseases one had better reconsider marrying
this person" (Date I95Ib:30).
Between I949 and I959 the numbers of sterilizations soared, reach-
ing 34,580. Of those sterilizations, 97 percent were performed on
women (Koya I96I: I36). The data on sterilizations were collected by
several state institutions and analyzed by, among others, Koya Yoshio,
one of the leaders of the Association of Racial Hygiene during World
War II. Now engaging in research on family planning, Koya continued
his career as a professor of public health at Nihon University and began
a new one as president of the Family Planning Federation of Japan. 24
His data clearly indicated that far from being abandoned, eugenic leg-
islation and thought were tremendously powerful in the immediate post-
war period, in a sense completing rather than obstructing that strain of
the colonization of sex. He was careful, however, to point out in I9 57
that only about 5 percent of sterilizations were carried out for "eugenic
reasons," whereas roughly half were performed for "medical reasons"
(a threat to the woman's life), and the other half for "health reasons"
(the risk of a decrease in the woman's health). Moreover, he suggested
that many more sterilizations might have occurred illegally and esti-
mated that the actual number of sterilizations may have exceeded a mil-
lion (Koya I957).25
In the early I970s, organizations of people with disabilities began
to openly criticize the eugenic legislation as national-socialist, but it
was not until the I990S that a revision movement finally succeeded. A
portion of the law was altered and in 1996 it was renamed the Mater-
nal Body Protection Law (Botai hog6h6}.26 Sterilization now can be per-
formed only with a woman's consent and the consent of her spouse,
if there is one; and instead of being governed primarily by a national
health policy, decisions about sterilizations are now largely individual-
ized (Norgren I998:74; Matsubara 2000:231). As Matsubara Yoko's
ongoing research attests, eugenic thinking and practice, among physi-
cians who perform sterilizations and abortions as well as among poten-

tial parents who agree to them, have been firmly established.
Censorship proved similarly resilient to abrupt changes. It was not
only carried on by the occupation forces but also by those who managed
to continue their careers in the postwar era by sanitizing their murky
personal prewar and wartime history. Omnipresent to his death in 1956,
Nagai Hisomu (19 54 : 23) declared in Marital Life (Fufu Seikatsu) that
love was important for a marriage and that sexual love had to be "prop-
erly practiced and properly enjoyed." Forgotten seemed the days when
he had preached that producing offspring was the primary purpose of
marriage and had promoted the rapid growth of the Japanese popula-
tion and the sterilization of people classified as "unfit." It goes without
saying, then, that in 1952, when Nagai founded the Japanese Associa-
tion for Sexology (Nihon Seigakkai), the earlier sex research he had op-
posed as harmful to "true science" and the sex researchers he had de-
nounced as charlatans were utterly ignored (Akagawa 1999:281). In
1950, Nagai and Anda Kakuichi had translated into Japanese the book
Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1938) by Alfred Kinsey, Wardell
B. Pomeroy, and Clyde E. Martin, and had established themselves as Ja-
pan's experts of sexology without a past (Shinozaki 195 4a: 168).27
As early as 1954, Shinozaki Nobuo claimed that occupation-era cen-
sorship had firmly driven sexologists into the realm of popular journals.
"In the past," Shinozaki explained, "we attempted to publish our work
in scholarly journals but were denied access. One cannot help the fact
that because sex research focuses on the relations of men and women,
an air of eroticism will always surround it .... However, our discus-
sions are not only about 'married life' but are closely tied to social and
psychological aspects as well" (Shinozaki 19 54a:169). The author of the
first major sex survey of married couples, The Sex Life of the Japanese
(Nihonjin no seiseikatsu, 1953), and a public health policy official in
the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, Shinozaki was one of many
postwar sexologists who valued and represented links between individ-
ual sexologists and state agencies. He had first entered the University of
Tokyo to study mathematics and anthropology in 1935 and had gradu-
ated in 1941. In 1943, he was employed by the Ministry of Social Wel-
fare and in 1946 transferred to the Institute of Population Problems in
the same ministry.
Shinozaki began a series of state-sponsored, large-scale sex surveys of
married couples that still dominate sex research carried out by state
agencies today, but he also founded a Study Group of Sexual Problems
(Shinozaki 1954a), provided marriage counseling (Shinozaki 1954b),

wrote factual articles in household encyclopedias and women's maga-
zines about abortion, contraception, and eugenic policies (Shinozaki
and Moriyama 1952), and continued his studies of population and fam-
ily planning problems until his retirement (Shinozaki 1978). In contrast
to prewar sexologists who saw the state as enemy of a "liberated sexu-
ality," this postwar generation of administrators of sex set out "to free
Japan of the militarist suppression" of sex in order to allow research and
education on sexual matters (see, e.g., Kaneko 1955:67-94). Yama-
moto Sugi (1954: 23 I) and Kanzaki Suzushi are other examples of the
type of sex expert who authored articles on sexual matters in women's
and household magazines. Yamamoto Sugi was a medical doctor, a rep-
resentative of the Council for Purity Education in the Ministry of Edu-
cation, and president of the Japanese Motherhood Federation (Nihon
Bosei Renmeikai). Kanzaki served the Japanese state as a member of the
Council for the Social Welfare of Children in the Ministry of Health and
Welfare. 28 Several bureaucratic units in the new government quickly set
out to ground the new liberties, and the postwar sex surveyors became
agents of the state who contributed to containing the new, supposedly
liberated sexuality.
In 1947, the Ministry of Education published a first paper on what
the authors termed "purity education" (junketsu kyoiku). Two years
later, the ministry had established the Council for Purity Education
(Junketsu Kyoiku Iinkai) in its Bureau of Social Education, which pub-
lished a Basic Outline of Purity Education (Junketsu kyoiku kihon
yoko). The Council for Purity Education consisted of twenty-four mem-
bers, including representatives of the Women's Christian Temperance
Union, social critics, university professors, teachers, feminists, medical
doctors, and officials from the Ministry of Education and the Ministry
of Health and Social Welfare (Akagawa 1999: 4 12, footnote 3). In 1955,
the council published the Draft for the Promotion of Purity Education
(Junketsu kyoiku no shian). Its core item was the teaching of abstinence
before marriage (Saotome et al. 1953). Although this is not explicit in
the text, historian Kameyama Michiko (Kameyama 1997 [1984]:241)
has suggested that the new purity education was primarily, if not ex-
plicitly, directed at girls.
Sex research was taken up again almost immediately after the end of
World War II, and new sexological organizations and journals fell back
on old techniques of slipping through the network of censorship the oc-
cupation forces had established. Married Life, for example, a magazine

mainly written by the members of a new Study Group for Sexual Prob-
lems, printed on its cover that the journal was not supposed to be sold
to minors, even though it should have been clear from its title that its
approach to sexual matters was strictly confined to wedlock and-from
the authors' names-that its agenda was educational rather than enter-
taining. Among the most prominent contributors to the magazine was
Ota Tenrei, who remained critical of the immediate postwar condemna-
tion of prelnarital sex, declaring repeatedly that if both partners agreed,
premarital sex should be tolerated. Just as he had done numerous times
during the 1930S, in Married Life he explained the functioning of the
Ota-Ring or spiral, his invention (Ota T. 1954a). He noted the impor-
tance of breast care (Ota T. 19 54 b) and was also one of the first sexol-
ogists who pursued the transition from a fixation on the uterus to a new
interest in female sexual sentiments and their relationship to the clitoris
and orgasm (Ota 195 4c, 195 5; see also Chichibu 195 2; Fufu Seikatsu
1954; Hashizume 1954; Akagawa 1999:3 1 7-3 18 ,3 2 3).
Changes in sex education were accompanied by an increasing num-
ber of large-scale sex research projects. Only three years after Japan's
surrender, the zoologist Asayama Shin'ichi began to compile data on the
sexual behavior and attitudes of both male and female students. His sur-
veys were explicitly modeled on Yamamoto and Yasuda's questionnaire
method of the early 1920S. In an attempt to understand the impact of
war on eighteen- to twenty-t\vo-year-old youth, he directed about thirty
questions at 693 students from six different high schools for boys and
283 students from five girls' schools in the Kansai area. Asayama's ques-
tionnaire included questions on experiences with the other sex, the re-
spondents' current sex life, the first occurrence of sexual feelings, sea-
sonal changes in sexual feelings, changes in sexual feelings in the course
of a day, masturbation, nocturnal emission, menstruation, venereal dis-
eases, contraception, homosexuality as sexual fantasy, influence of the
war on sex life, sex education, coeducation, and perceptions of an ideal
sex life. 29
A professor at Osaka Municipal University, Asayama was the first
Japanese sexologist to survey boys and girls. He found that girls realized
their subordinate status most of all in sexual relationships and thus suf-
fered from "men's egoism" (dansei no egoizumu) and "society's irra-
tionality" (shakai no fugori). Asayama wished his book to be a source
for everyone and particularly for youths themselves, and for educators
r82 Breeding the Japanese "Race"
Figure 15. The April r 949 issue of the magazine Marital Sex Life
(Fufu no Seiseikatsu) offered guidance on perfect sexual love for mar-
ried couples and an abundance of erotic stories, now almost exclu-
sively illustrated by figures with Caucasian looks.
and parents and those in charge of social policies. "In order that daugh-
ters not be hurt, future wives become happy, and sexuality really liber-
ated, we must make an effort to change our society at large," Asayama
wrote. Even these major changes, however, would not suffice. He de-
clared similarly important the improvement of the economic situation of
young men and the revolutionizing of the economic structure in order to

encourage and enable young men to get married (Asayama 1949:255).
Just as Yamamoto and Yasuda almost thirty years earlier, Asayama
forcefully promoted the idea of education as the basis for social change
and reform and insisted on the social, economic, and political condi-
tionality of sexual behavior. He too continued his research with ever-
increasing numbers of respondents. Okada Enji, a researcher at the
Yokohama Pedagogical Institute (Yokohama Ky6iku Kenkyujo), con-
ducted a five-year survey on Sexual Knowledge during Puberty (Shi-
shunki no seichishiki) in which he found what he classified as a shock-
ing lack of sexual knowledge among middle and high school students. 3o
In addition to Asayama's, Okada's, and other individual researchers'
studies, learned societies ranging from the Japanese Association for Sex-
ology to the Japan Hygiene Statistics Association conducted their own
surveys. In 1953, for example, a group of researchers from the Japan
Hygiene Statistics Association classified sex education of teenagers as
a huge and serious problem (Saotome et al. 1953:30). The group had
found that about a fifth of their respondents did not know what the
word "sex" meant, while another fifth did not know how children came
into being. The lack of sexual knowledge was more glaring among rural
youth than urban youth and sex education and sex research seemed
more necessary then ever {Saotome et al. 1953: 30).31
Scarcely ten years after the end of World War II, Shinozaki Nobuo
noted that during the previous ten years the first stage of sex research
had been overcome and the second step had been made due to the efforts
of the Study Group for Sexual Problems (Seimondai Kenkyukai) (Shi-
nozaki 1954a:168). The Study Group became the mother organization
of the Japanese Association for Sexology (Nihon Seigakkai), founded in
195 2 by Nagai Hisomu (Shinozaki 19 54a:169; see also Akagawa 1999:
281). The goals of the study group included research on sexual issues,
the development of measures for achieving a "wholesome" sexual life,
sexual morals, and sex education and contributions to the welfare of hu-
manity (jinrui fukushi).
Among the members of the study group were professors from Sh6wa
Medical University, the Japan College of Economy, Kei6 University, the
University of Tokyo, Japan University, and the Osaka Municipal Uni-
versity. Non-academic members included the director of the Yoshiwara
Hospital, police officials, middle school principals, officials from the
Council for Children's Welfare in the Ministry of Health and Welfare,
the director of the Institute of Population Problems, an editor of the
Yomiuri Shinbun~ and a representative from the Council for Purity Ed-
ucation in the Ministry of Education (Shinozaki 195 4a: 169).
Through these channels, processes of achieving a "colonial ruling ap-
paratus" of sex and sexuality continued into the immediate postwar era.
Perhaps the ties between the administrators of sex and sexuality in the
ministries of education and welfare and sexologists in educational and
research institutions, have never been as close as in the postwar era. In
contrast to Yamamoto Senji, Ota Tenrei, and other sexologists who had
been associated with the Left and had positioned themselves at a dis-
tance from direct governmental control, sexologists after World War II
explicitly linked the state and citizens' organizations, thus blurring the
boundaries between them.
Epilogue
[E]xpectations of sex education tend to be deeply rooted in
moralism and puritanism and bear the danger of retrogress-
ing history.... The kind of sex education we envision is
basically directed at wiping out sexual prejudices that have
emerged in Japanese history and at positively establishing
a rich sexuality as "human sexuality" [English in original]
grounded in human life, and at fostering the power to build
fruitful human relations anew. Based on gender equality
guaranteed in the constitution and in educational legislation,
this sex education is also permeated with esteem for science
and humanity.
Council for Education and Research on
"Humans and Sex/Sexuality," manifesto
In Japan, scholarly interest in sexual difference and in sexual practice

and its connection to health and a long life has a history that reaches
back at least to the beginning of the Tokugawa era (see, e.g., Shimizu
1989). Yet the sexual science that arose at the beginning of the twenti-
eth century was more than simply another chapter in that history. It was
distinctive in a number of ways. In the first place, it attempted to be far
more precise and empirical than anything that had preceded it. In addi-
tion, it was able to draw on new developments in science and medicine:
obstetrics and gynecology were emerging fields. Sociology, anthropol-
ogy, psychology, and pedagogy had just been founded. And a new biol-
ogy had begun to turn away from a classificatory and descriptive natu-
ral history to embrace the comprehensive study of the living organism,
whether vegetable, animal, or human.
By the 1950S, most of the elements that had created a sexual sci-
ence and continued to make sexual knowledge were in place. Vast social
change was to come. Before and since, potentially explosive subjects have
186 Epilogue
often involved sexual matters-debates about Viagra and the pill, HIV
and sex education, or new types of prostitution. But the ways of making
sexual knowledge, the attempts at administering sex and sexuality, and
the emphasis on a hardly questioned heteronormativity have not been
subject to major conceptual changes comparable to those that took place
during the first half of the twentieth century. Recent conflicts, in fact, in
many ways both reflect and reiterate earlier discursive procedures over
sex and sexuality, power, and knowledge. This epilogue serves to high-
light those reiterations in order to demonstrate the enduring power of
the colonial ruling apparatus of sex.
MALE ANXIETIES
On 27 March 1998, the American Food and Drug Administration ap-

proved a new anti-impotence drug named Sildenafil. The pill for erectile
dysfunction is to be taken an hour before sex and only once during a
twenty-four-hour period. It creates the release of certain chemicals in the
penis that cause muscle tissue in the organ to relax, thereby increasing
blood flow in the area and allowing an erection to occur when the man
is stimulated. Public response was so great that the drug, better known
under the trade name Viagra, quickly took control of more than 94 per-
cent of the anti-impotence drug market, resulting in 120,000 prescrip-
tions in its second week alone. Physicians in the United States claimed
that no medical breakthrough had generated so much excitement since
the approval of the birth control pill. American medical officials pre-
dicted that what some called "the most promising impotence treatment
ever" would outpace even the antidepressant drug Prozac to become the
top-selling prescription drug of all time (Leavy 1998).
Exploring its potential market in Japan, Pfizer, the pharmaceutical
company that produces the drug, confirmed that in Japan, just as in the
United States, hundreds of thousands of men suffer from impotence.
Throughout 1998, however, Pfizer's representatives in Japan remained
pessimistic about a quick approval ofViagra, due to Japan's lengthy drug
testing procedure. According to Japanese law, a new drug first must be
tested on animals as well as clinically tested on Japanese citizens. Once
the results have been submitted to the secretive and male-dominated
Central Pharmaceutical Affairs Council in the Ministry of Health and
Welfare, it typically takes another two years for government screening
to be completed (Amaha 1998; Veda 1998).
The media hype surrounding Viagra in the United States, however,
Epilogue
immediately spilled over into Japan. By the fall of 1998, debates about
Viagra's implications for male sexual performance in particular and sex-
ual relationships in general had begun to surface in a great number of
Japanese general-interest magazines, as well as in specialized publica-
tions (see, e.g., Gendai 1998).1 By early 1999, readers' questions about
the use of Viagra had become common in sexual advice columns and
frequently appeared interspersed with questions about other common
problems such as abortion, extramarital relations, "compensated dat-
ing," "abnormal sex," and techniques to reach climax (see, e.g., Gendai
1999)
Anticipating a delayed approval of the drug, some Japanese men
found ways to circumvent the law and acquire the anti-impotence drug
almost immediately after Viagra became available for sale in the United
States. A Japanese travel agency, for example, put together tours to
Hawaii for men who \vanted to buy the drug. The participants-typi-
cally men in their fifties-needed to get blood tests from a Japanese phy-
sician before leaving. The results were faxed to a physician in Hawaii,
who then prescribed the drug. The travel agency offered these tours for
$640 (90,000 yen), in addition to $600 for the consultation, prescrip-
tion, and the first bottle of thirty Viagra tablets (Amaha 1998; Hender-
son 1998).
In addition to these tours, Japanese men who wanted to use Viagra
immediately turned to the internet, where black market dealers offered
the drug for double or triple the U.S. price (Amaha 1998; Tashiro and
Macintyre 1998; Yamauchi K. 1998; Asahi Shinbun 2001). Yet another
alternative came from a Los Angeles-based doctor who held American
and Japanese medical licenses. He set up a branch in Tokyo and visited
every few months to deliver a supply of Viagra. (Bringing drugs back to
Japan from the United States is legal, but only if they are for personal
use [Amaha 1998; Tashiro and Macintyre 1998].) However, by Septem-
ber 1998, an estimated two hundred Japanese drugstores had begun to
sell "individually imported" Viagra pills. These pills were sold on the ba-
sis of customers' "personal judgment" rather than a medical examina-
tion. Subsequently, media reports claimed that one Tokyo-based drug-
store alone had sold more than three thousand bottles of thirty pills each
\vithin eight weeks. Men who had tried Viagra were quoted as saying
that they would never again fall back on the flourishing market for in-
digenous Japanese health tonics and aphrodisiacs and other "cures" for
impotence such as injection therapy and vacuum pumps (Tashiro and
Macintyre 1998; Oshima and Toyama 1998; Eardley 1998).
188 Epilogue
In Japan, doctors soon became concerned about the uncontrolled dis-

tribution and unsupervised use ofViagra (Ueda 1998).2 The chairman of
the Japanese Association for Sexual Functioning (Nihon Sei Kino Gak-
kai), for example, acknowledged that impotence was a condition that
should be treated, but he also pointed out that Japanese men lacked un-
derstanding of the drug and tended to overestimate its power to improve
their sexual relationships (Shirai Masafumi, quoted in Oshima and Toy-
ama 1998). Ten months after its initial introduction in the United States,
Viagra was approved in Japan.
The speedy government approval on 27 January 1999, just six months
after an application had been submitted to the Central Pharmaceutical
Affairs Council, not only surprised Viagra producer Pfizer but also drew
widespread protest from various groups that had long fought for the le-
galization of the contraceptive pill. Ironically, the unusually rapid ap-
proval of Viagra eventually prompted an end to the ban on the low-dose
contraceptive pill for women on 22 June 1999. Defending their decision,
Japanese health officials argued that Viagra's speedy approval was nec-
essary due to the growing health risks posed by unsupervised illegal
imports. They also insisted that the two drugs-Viagra and the pill-
should not be compared. Viagra is prescribed to treat an ailment, they
argued, whereas the low-dose pill is a contraceptive option for healthy
women (Watts 1999).
Critics of the Health and Welfare Ministry countered that the ap-
proval of oral contraceptives had been delayed due to concerns about
morality, sexually transmitted diseases, and health risks-concerns
which were all equally applicable to Viagra. Many also noted that Vi-
agra led to I30 deaths worldwide in one year, whereas the low-dose
contraceptive pill had been used safely by hundreds of millions of women
for decades. The stark contrast in the treatment of an anti-impotence
drug for men and the contraceptive pill for women sparked an uproar
that prompted women's groups to accuse the government of sexism. In
contrast to the pill, Viagra was approved so quickly that guidelines for
the sale of the drug were still in the process of being determined (Watts
I999: 81 9)
Since the late I 9 60S, Japanese health officials indeed had continued to
cite fears about the destruction of the nation's sexual morals, the below-
replacement-level birth rate, a reduction in condom use at a time when
AIDS prevention was considered a top health policy priority, and even
environmental harm from hormones. 3 The debate seemed strikingly
similar to a much earlier one, when, from the I920S through the late
Epilogue
1940s, authorities tolerated the sale of potency enhancing drugs but

adamantly refused to legalize means of birth control.
The Viagra debate revealed male anxieties that were similar in many
ways to those from the past, but it also differed in important respects.
Potency enhancing drugs and treatments from the imperialist era had
seemed to reinforce the state's military prowess and at the same time had
appeared to help in the fight against the perceived degeneration of the
Japanese "race" believed to have been caused by industrialization and
modernization. The recent dispute about Viagra and erectile dysfunc-
tion, however, seemed to highlight a different kind of male anxiety. The
debate about Viagra versus the pill was not simply about the threaten-
ing decline in male virility or the availability of two different kinds of
drugs; it also highlighted the still unbalanced power relations in matters
of control over sexuality and reproduction. In Japan (and elsewhere),
erections have been presented as understandable and manipulable in
and of themselves, separated from person or script or relationship.4 A
discourse of vascular processes-blood flow into the penis, trapping
mechanisms in the penis, venous outflow-has taken over. While one
expects women to occupy an essential place in the discourse-the need
for vaginal penetration being the justification for the entire enterprise-
women are only present in terms of universalized vaginal needs; their ac-
tual desires and opinions are conveniently invisible (Tiefer 1994: 374).
The immediate success of Viagra and the struggle to legalize the pill
reflect several of the larger issues discussed throughout this book. The
imbalance between the rapid handling of what was associated with male
sexual needs and potency-reminiscent of wartime notions of a virile
and militarist manhood-and the hesitant dealing with women's desire
to increase their control over their own sexuality and bodies appears
surprisingly constant historically, especially considering the major social
changes that have taken place between the two instances.
In contrast to Viagra, the pill has had a much more complicated
history in Japan. While the low-dose contraceptive pill has remained
contested, high- and medium-dose pills have been prescribed legally
for menstrual disorders since the 1950S. Many Japanese women-their
numbers were estimated in 1996 at 500,000 to 80o,ooo-have misused
these "therapeutic" high-dose progestins for purposes of contraception
(Maruyama, Raphael, and Djerassi 1996; Henderson 1999a; Hollander
1999). The legalization of the high-dose pill for contraceptive purposes
was first discussed in 1965, but it remained illegal because juridical au-
thorities were worried about its impact on female sexual morale. More-
Epilogue
over, among the Japanese public the fear has remained that the pill might
cause unwelcome side effects, such as those detected from the use of ear-
lier versions of the pill during the 1960s and 1970s. After repeated fail-
ure to achieve approval for the high-dose pill in the 1970S, various
women's groups and family planning organizations pushed for legaliza-
tion of a low-dose pill. In 1986, the Ministry of Health and Welfare cre-
ated a set of regulations for the legalization of a low-dose pill, which was
tested up until 1992.
Despite the fact that no side effects could be proven to occur, the Cen-
tral Pharmaceutical Affairs Council again renewed the ban on the pill.
This time, officials pointed out that condoms have been the contracep-
tive method used most often and argued that "legalization of the pill
may make people believe that the pill can prevent an AIDS infection"
(see Marumoto 1995).5 Indeed, about 75 percent of respondents in sur-
veys on sexual behavior choose condoms as their primary contraception
method. Half of them, however, also use coitus interruptus (Imamura,
Unno, and Ishimaru 1990: 670; Inoue und Ehara 1995: 69).6 Moreover,
according to the results of studies on the sexual behavior of youth in
present-day Japan, contraceptives are used in only about half of the sex-
ual encounters of Japanese youth, which partly explains the increase in
teenage pregnancy and abortion in recent years (Hara 1996: 80).
Under the pressure of proponents of the pill, the Central Pharmaceu-
tical Affairs Council again began experiments with a low-dose pill in
1996. Finally, the Council agreed to legalize the pill. Pill producers, phy-
sicians, clinics, and women continued to wait, however, as removal of
the ban was further delayed. While the pill had been available to most
women in the rest of the industrialized world for nearly four decades, Ja-
pan was the only country in the United Nations with a ban on the pill.
Feminist groups and other organizations that had been fighting for the
legalization of the pill concluded that physicians lobbied for the con-
tinued prohibition of the pill because they made about I billion yen per
year providing abortions. According to official figures, about 400,000
abortions are performed annually in Japan; however, the Asia-Pacific
Center and other experts on reproductive health suggest that this num-
ber would have to be tripled or even quadrupled in order to reflect the
actual number of abortions per year, which would mean that half of all
pregnancies are terminated by an abortion (Maruyama, Raphael, and
Djerassi 1996; Economist 1997:71).
Other critics argued that family planning is held firmly in the hands
of the rubber industry, represented by an influential lobby in the Min-
Epilogue 19 1
istry of Health and Welfare, which would suffer major losses if the pill
were legalized. Since the approval of the pill, in fact, condom companies
indeed have become anxious about their profits. Anticipating profit loss,
Okamoto, the world's largest condom maker, has announced that it will
make its product up to 20 percent thinner-even though Japanese con-
doms are already considered the most "sensitive" in the world (News-
week 1999).
The rapid approval ofViagra also has raised suspicions of a secret na-
tionalist agenda to boost the population, which is aging faster than any
other society in the world due to the negative-growth birth rate. "The
drug that lets you get pregnant is approved, but the one that would pre-
vent pregnancy is not," lawmaker Fukushima Mizuho told reporters af-
ter the approval of Viagra. "The Japanese government is doing every-
thing possible to increase the birth rate" (Fukushima Mizuho, quoted in
Watts 1999:819). It may be unlikely that the anti-impotence drug will
have a measurable impact on the birth rate, but Japan's declining birth
rate has indeed been a topic of concern for the architects of social wel-
fare and health policies. By the end of the 1980s, the birth rate of 1.59
children per woman between the ages of fifteen and forty-nine had be-
gun to alarm politicians and the media. By 2001, the rate had further
decreased, to 1.33. The low birth rate usually is explained by three fac-
tors: men and women are marrying at a later age; women are older when
they have their first child; and the number of women and men who re-
main unmarried and choose to remain childless is increasing.
This demographic development has been addressed frequently by of-
ficials since the latter half of the 1980s, when the aging of its society, and
thus the question of the sustainability of its social welfare system, was
declared to be one of Japan's most pressing social problems. 7 In March
1990, then-Prime Minister Kaifu said quite blatantly that the stagnating
birth rate would cause a number of problems concerning the future of
the country. "Looking into the future," he claimed, "we must encour-
age our youth to have children" (see Arioka 1990). The president of the
Federation of Economic Organizations (Keidanren) went a step further,
urging Japanese men to spend less time playing golf and Mahjong and
instead spend more time attending to their wives (see Arioka 1990).
Many officials share this view. Most women, however, see things differ-
ently. The vast majority of women consider the process of conceiving,
bearing, and raising a child to be a personal matter and do not see any
reason why they should adapt their attitude and behavior to the gov-
ernment's concerns (Arioka 1990: 52).8
Epilogue
How and if the pill will facilitate women's stance and decision-mak-
ing remains to be seen, as the results of studies conducted during the
1990S on projected pill use vary considerably. While sociologists Ogawa
Naohiro and Robert D. Retherford report that their study shows 13 per-
cent of women favor the pill. over all other contraceptives (a number
which would be only insignificantly lower than the percentage of actual
pill users in North America and Northern and Western Europe), bian-
nual national surveys on family planning conducted by the Mainichi
Shinbun identify only 7 percent of women as potential pill users (Ogawa
and Retherford 1991:378; Kitamura K. 1999:44).9 In the latter study,
54 percent of the respondents said they would not want to use the pill,
35 percent were undecided and 4 percent did not answer the question.
Among those who answered that they would not use the pill, 70 per-
cent were worried about side effects. Others said that they were satisfied
with their current method. Almost 33 percent reasoned that by using the
pill instead of condoms or withdrawal, women would end up bearing
the burden of contraception. They also noted that the pill did not pre-
vent an infection with HIV. About 10 percent felt that taking a pill every
day was too cumbersome, and another 10 percent replied that the pel-
vic examination needed for the pill prescription would be too much
trouble (Kitamura K. 1999 :44). Among the two main reasons for a pos-
itive attitude toward the pill were its high degree of effectiveness and the
control it allows women to maintain over contraception. Other wel-
come aspects include the fact that the pill does not interrupt sexual in-
tercourse; that it prevents women from having to resort to abortion; that
it has no major side effects; and that the method already has demon-
strated its success in other countries (Kitamura K. 1999:44).
Proponents of the legalization of the low-dose contraceptive pill at-
tribute the ambivalent attitudes of Japanese women to the legal situation
prior to 1999 and widespread ignorance about the pill among the Japa-
nese public, including medical professionals and women of reproductive
age. As if echoing the birth control activists' claims during the 1920S and
1930S, a Tokyo grassroots group called the Professional Women's Coali-
tion for Sexuality and Health, which has been pushing for the pill's
approval, stated that in Japan, doctors and nurses have almost no
knowledge about modern contraception methods (Henderson 1999b).
Kitamura Kunia, director of the Family Planning Clinic of the Japanese
Family Planning Association, also argued that an enormous educational
campaign about the low-dose pill would be necessary in order to estab-
Epilogue I93
lish it as an acceptable alternative to other contraceptive methods and

abortion (Kitamura K. 1999:44).
This campaign clearly would need to reach not only professional clin-
ics and women's homes, but also the classrooms of the younger genera-
tion. High school sex education, or rather "education for the prevention
of AIDS" (eizu yobo kyoiku), as it has been called since the late 1980s,
has been characterized by an emphasis on reproduction rather than
contraception (thus suggesting that the production of children is the
main purpose of sex), by an implicit emphasis on heteronormativity
(thus neglecting or discouraging homosexuality and other sexualities),
and by the language of a potentially dangerous sexuality (suggesting
that sex can lead to sexually transmitted diseases and AIDS). Although
in 1965 the Ministry of Education replaced "purity education" with
"guidance in sexual matters" (sei ni kan sure shido) or "sex education"
(seikyoiku) in its documents, teachers have continued to describe the
main aim of sex as reproduction within the boundaries of rnarriage. 10
Emphasizing the importance of premarital abstinence, teachers tend to
classify sex as socially unacceptable for high school students. 11 Thus, in
the classrooms of middle and high schools, contraception is hardly men-
tioned and abortion is presented as a sometimes unavoidable, if sorrow-
ful, outcome of teenage pregnancy (Kawahara 1996: 143 - I 52).12
DISTRUST IN NUMBERS
This conservative approach seems rather mismatched with the actual

sexual behavior and attitudes toward sex among Japanese youth, which
has caused alarm among educators who have begun to detect a con-
tinuing trend toward the "increasingly early age at which youth have
their first sexual experiences" and the general "disarray of sex" (Hara
1996: 80).
Following the individual sex surveys from the immediate postwar pe-
riod-modeled on the pioneering efforts of prewar sexologists-gov-
ernment agencies, news corporations, and educational organizations be-
gan to undertake large-scale surveys of 3,000 to 5,000 Japanese youth. 13
These surveys frequently have been carried out by large newspapers, the
prime minister's office, the Japan Broadcasting Corporation, and the Ja-
pan Association for Sex Education (founded in 1974 by the Ministry of
Education). All of these organizations consider the age at which Japa-
nese youth have their first sexual intercourse to be a crucial marker of
I94 Epilogue
changes in sexual behavior and attitudes among members of the younger

generation.
About half of the respondents of a 1983 survey carried out by the
prime minister's office found premarital coitus acceptable within the
boundaries of a "deep love relationship," while more than 20 percent re-
jected premarital sex regardless of emotional circumstances (Naikaku
sori daijin kanbo kohoshitsu 1983 : 568). As for the "preservation of vir-
ginity" (junketsu 0 tamotsu), which had been highly valued up to the
1970s, girls in the 1980s did not seem to care as much about it as their
parents might have expected them to. A survey among 4,000 female
high school students from 1984 revealed that most of them ascribed
diminishing importance to the "preservation of virginity" until marriage
(Yomiuri shinbun shakaibu I984:9I). Studies conducted during the
I990S show that an increasing number of Japanese and other youth dis-
sociate sex from marriage.
According to comparative surveys on sexual behavior, however, Ja-
pan's youth still appear rather conservative compared to youth in West-
ern and Northern Europe and even North America. Well into the I980s,
only about 4 percent of eighteen- to twenty-four-year-olds in Japan had
an unconditionally positive attitude toward premarital sex, compared
with about 25 percent of their English, Swedish, German, or French
counterparts (Nihon hoso shupp an kyokai 1986:75). And in 1997,
whereas 70-80 percent of the young people in Germany, Great Britain,
the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden and 41 percent in the United
States thought there was nothing wrong with sex before marriage, only
15 percent of Japanese youth fully agreed (Widmer, Treas and Newcomb
199 8 :35 1 ).14
However, tolerance toward one's own sexual experimentation did
not necessarily indicate a similar degree of tolerance toward the behav-
ior of a potential spouse. While a small portion of Japanese male and fe-
male youth allowed themselves premarital sexual activities, many of
them expected their spouses not to have had sexual experience (Yomiuri
shinbun shakaibu 1984: 92). Overall, the interpreters of these sex sur-
veys note, the trend toward a pro-premarital sexual attitude is becom-
ing stronger for both boys and girls, is particularly strong among girls,
and increases with age among members of both sexes, but there are no
extreme changes in the experience rate of junior high school students
(Hara I996:79-80).
Schoolchildren's attitudes have not been the only indicator of changes
in sexual attitudes, however. The 1980s saw the beginning of the heyday
Epilogue I95
of large-scale sociological surveys not only on the sexual behavior of

youth, but on that of married couples. Most of these surveys were re-
gionally restricted or otherwise fragmented until Ishikawa Hiroyoshi,
Saito Shigeo, and Wagatsuma Hiroshi published their ambitiously titled
study Japanese Sexuality (Nihonjin no sei) in 1984. In an attempt to
carry out a large-scale survey explicitly modeled on the Kinsey Report
and to counterbalance sex-related news in popular media with a "sci-
entific survey" (Ishikawa, Saito, and Wagatsuma 1984: foreword), they
distributed more than 16,000 questionnaires and selected 1,549 re-
sponses for further analysis. All of the respondents were married couples.
No explanation is given for why the study was exclusively directed at
married and supposedly heterosexual people, and questions on extra-
marital sexual relationships explicitly refer to the opposite sex only (Ishi-
kawa, Saito, and Wagatsuma 1984: 11-12). These flaws did not go un-
noticed among sociological sex researchers in Japan.
In an attempt to show the diversity of female sexual experience by
supplementing quantitative methods with qualitative research in the
form of intensive interviewing, sociologists Imamura Naomi, Unno Yiiki,
and Ishimaru Kumiko published the More Report (Moa rip6to NOW)
on sexual behavior and attitudes of women in 1990. The volume docu-
mented the responses of 1,987 women between the ages of thirteen and
sixty-one, of whom 80 percent were in their twenties and a majority were
white-collar workers at the time of the survey (Imamura, Unno, and
Ishimaru 199:656-657).15
The major part of the 678-page book consists of personal accounts of
female sexual experiences. As in virtually all sex surveys of the postwar
era in Japan, sexual satisfaction was measured in orgasms, including the
age at which the respondents had their first orgasm, frequency of or-
gasms, ratio of orgasms per instances of intercourse, etc. While almost
half of the surveyed women said that they always had orgasms when
they masturbated, only 9 percent reported always having an orgasm
through sexual intercourse (Imamura, Unno, and Ishimaru 1990:662).
The researchers found that although most women know how to have an
orgasm and feel capable of having a fulfilling sex life, many remain un-
satisfied by sexual intercourse with their male partners. As the responsi-
bility is placed on the male partners' shoulders, the authors conclude
that even in contemporary Japan women are afraid of being considered
"unfeminine" if they explicitly show interest in sexual satisfaction (Ima-
mura, Unno, and Ishimaru I990:676-677).
The More Report is one of very few recent sex surveys that include
Epilogue
questions on homosexual practices. While 42 percent of the surveyed

women have a positive attitude toward homosexuality (d6seiai) in gen-
eral, as opposed to 36 percent who describe their attitude as negative,
only 8 percent report that they themselves have had homosexual ex-
periences (Imamura, Unno, and Ishimaru I990:671). The trend of dis-
sociating sex from marriage among youth is also reflected in the sex-
ual behavior of adult women. In contrast to the earlier survey results,
roughly 80 percent of women between the ages of thirteen and sixty-one
had sexual partners at the time of the survey, although only 22 percent
of them were married (Imamura, Unno, and Ishimaru 1990:657). The
majority had their first sexual experience between the ages of sixteen
and twenty-two, while 7.5 percent had their first experience between the
ages of thirteen and fifteen (Imamura, Unno, and Ishimaru 1990: 656).
While more than 70 percent of respondents shared the opinion that love
(aijo) is necessary for having sex, half of them had had "sex without
love" at least once (Imamura, Unno, and Ishimaru 1990:669).
The mass production of social scientific data on sexual behavior and
attitudes, of course, bears its own problems. There is no reason to share
a naIve faith in the validity of questionnaires, interviews, and statistical
tables with its pioneers, Yamamoto Senji in Japan, Magnus Hirschfeld
in Germany, Richard von Krafft-Ebing in Austria, or Alfred Kinsey in
the United States. The proliferation since 1948 of the Kinsey Reports
and other Kinsey-type inquiries in the United States may be, as Roy
Porter (1994: 2) speculated, an indicator of either an ardent New World
faith in science (or sex) or a greater Old World prudery. Surveys on
sexual behavior of ever more people in Japan, in any case, are firmly
embedded in a culture of an abundance of social scientific surveys, as
the impressive annually published collections of public opinion surveys
attest. 16
When the studies are comparative-like the studies carried out by,
for example, the NHK (Nihon hoso shuppan kyokai 1986) and Eric D.
Widmer, Judith Treas, and Robert Newcomb (1998)-the problems of
this kind of data only multiply. As noted above, both research teams
found a huge difference between attitudes toward premarital sex among
youth in Northern and Western European countries at one end of the ex-
treme and Japanese youth at the other end. One might speculate that
Japanese respondents might feel pressed to conform in their response to
conservative expectations about sexual experience, whereas European
youth would conform to a permissive and sexually adventurous ideal
there, thus widening the gap between the two groups.
Epilogue 197
Regardless of these potential pitfalls, from a historical perspective,

two characteristics set these surveys apart from their early-twentieth-
century versions, and one characteristic is shared by both types of in-
vestigations. For one thing, the creation of social scientific data on sex-
once the task of self-appointed sexologists who were marginal to the
academy, flirted with mass media, but for the most part clashed with the
state and its agencies-has come to rest firmly in the hands of govern-
ment institutions and media conglomerates. By asking some questions
over and over again while omitting others, these surveys and the publi-
cation of their results contribute to the frequent reaffirmation of norma-
tive notions of (acceptable and desirable) sexual practice. The question
of the ways in which the perception of social, political, and economic re-
alities are molded by the very surveys that supposedly represent them
has yet to be examined.
In contrast to the military surgeons and police officers who first be-
gan to systematically investigate the sexual practices of specific groups
within Japanese society in the late nineteenth century, these present-day
accountants of sexual behavior seem less overtly intrusive. However,
they are similarly firm about the creation of a sexual normalcy and nor-
mativity that is now circulating, not within the comparatively closed
elite of guardians of the nation-state, but on public display. The intimacy
of sexuality-perhaps always merely imagined-has been turned into a
long list of criteria against which one can measure oneself and others.
Undoubtedly, the creation, administration, and management of norma-
tive sexuality continue to be negotiated in a highly heterogeneous forum
of officials, media, sex experts, educators, and ordinary Japanese women
and men. To talk about sex, even the language of percentages and tables
suggests, means to talk about society-its social (and sexual and gen-
dered) order, its power relations, and its potential for change. Even in
today's public arena of newspaper reports, magazine articles, and late-
night radio and television shows, sex and sexuality remain enfolded in
a rhetoric of liberation, disclosure, and containment. These public de-
bates reproduce a normativity that centers on heterosexuality and,
through it, a gendered order of sexual matters and society.
Notes
INTRODUCTION
I. A 1928 amendment by emergency imperial decree made the law's provi-

sions much harsher by including the ability to impose the death penalty, and a
1941 revision broadened its scope to include preventive arrest. The law was re-
scinded in October 1945.
2. The claim that the middle and upper classes were morally and intellec-
tually superior, and that therefore their reproduction \vas especially desirable,
echoed the claims of Francis Galton (1822-1911), the founder of eugenics.
CHAPTER I
I. For more detailed analyses of early ideas of eugenics and "racial improve-
ment," see Matsubara 1997, Otsubo and Bartholomew 1998, Morris-Suzuki
1998, Otsubo 1999, and Robertson 2001.
2. Nagai's book contained an evolutionist history of humankind, a physio-
logical account of sumo wrestlers' bodies, and a physiological and hygienic anal-
ysis of the position of the Japanese population in the "competition of the races"
(minzoku kyoso).
3. This supposed physical inferiority also was noticed at the same time by
Western authors. In 1896 an English ethnologist wrote, "Compared with an av-
erage Chinese, the 'Manchus' or the Koreans, they [the Japanese] are a weak
folk, who undoubtedly possess endurance but are physically weak with moder-
ate muscle development, a weak chest and a noticeable tendency towards ane-
mia which, however, can be led back to the diet of rice, fish, and vegetables." On
the other hand, the author estimated the intellectual capability of the Japanese
199
200 Notes to Pages 20 - 34
to be comparable to that of inhabitants of progressive European countries (see

Chamberlain I9 I 2).
4. For an analysis of the complicated history of the cultural meanings of
blood and its relationship to eugenics and genetics, see Robertson 2002.
5. The concern for control was reflected in what Carol Gluck has called the
"Meiji ideology" (Gluck I98 5) and in Tetsuo Najita's notion of regulation as
opposed to eradication of conflicts (Najita 1983: 16). It also considerably shaped
discussions on the transformation of entire scientific disciplines (S. Tanaka
1993: I 5)
6. In the mid-I 870S, the Home Department had 600,000 yen at its disposal,
200,000 of which were allocated to the Bureau of Hygiene. At the beginning
of the 1880s, Nagayo Sensai attempted to increase the budget by introducing
a tax on pharmaceutical products (Tsurumi 1937:303, 3I2). The Bureau of
Hygiene existed until I938, when the Ministry for Health and Welfare was
founded, which comprised the former Bureau of Social Affairs and the Bureau
of Hygiene in the Home Department. The establishment of the Ministry of
Health and Welfare was first recommended by administrators in the Army Min-
istry, who had become increasingly concerned about the deteriorating physical
qualities of male recruits. The new ministry consisted of five units: bureaus for
physical strength, hygiene, society, and labor, and a council for insurance (Kame-
yama I997 [I9 84]:I34)
7. Got6 Shinpei published three such volumes, one for boys, one for youth,
and one for adults, as "a present to the nation" (1926:3).
8. The Ch6heirei was renamed Heiekiho (Military Service Law) in 1927
(Kato Y. I996:4).
9. Yamagata Aritomo was the main force behind the introduction of con-
scription and one of the main engineers of the Imperial Army, which was origi-
nally modeled after the French army. After Germany defeated France in I87I,
Yamagata focused on the German military as a model for the Japanese army.
The structure of the Imperial Navy was based on that of the British navy, which
was the most powerful in the world at the time. Yamagata served as Japan's prime
minister twice, from I889 to 1891 and from I898 to I900, and as justice min-
ister from 1892 to I893. In 1894 and 1895 he served as the commander of the
First Army during the Sino-Japanese war.
10. For the development of recruitment rates between 1916 and 1945, see
Kate Y. 1996:66 and Drea 1998:229, footnote 8.
I I. Following an order by the Ministry of Education, "achievements in learn-
ing" (gakuryoku kentei) were tested in addition to the evaluation of the con-
scripts' character. However, the results of these tests were not used to determine
recruitment (Kate Y. 1996 : I59).
I2. Edward Drea (1998: 86) has suggested that to be deprived of a son may
not have been disadvantageous to the family's survival in all cases. Because fam-
ilies received a death benefit proportional to rank, some may have thought it
beneficial to the family's survival if their son did not return horne.
13. Mori Rintaro was the head of the Military Academy, the Army Medical
Academy, and the Military Medicine Division of the Army Department in the
colonial administration of Taiwan. He also served as the chair of the Medical De-
Notes to Pages 34-38 201
partment in the Army Ministry and as the director of the Association for Mili-
tary Medicine (Rikugun Gun'i Gakkai), which was founded in 1884 (Maru-
yama I984:viii).
14. Katarzyna Cwiertka (1999: 118-140) has described the introduction
into the Imperial Army and Navy of Western food that was considered health-
ier and more nutritious.
15. Ieda Sakichi referred to the following surveys on venereal disease pa-
tients in 1936: the 1912 survey of 789 patients in regional hospitals, the 1920
survey of 11,329 venereal disease-infected soldiers in all of Japan, the 1933 sur-
vey of 144 venereal disease-infected soldiers from the prefecture Kanagawa,
and the 1935 survey of 324 soldiers (Ieda 1936: 30 - 3 I). These surveys were
also discussed in sexological journals (e.g., Sei no Kenkyu I919b).
I6. Until the beginning of World War I, Salvarsan and other drugs were
mostly imported from Germany. When German-Japanese relations began to de-
teriorate after the outbreak of the war, Japanese scholars of pharmaceutics at the
Imperial University of Tokyo, the hospital of the Manchurian Railway Com-
pany, and a few other institutions began to research the possibilities for produc-
ing a similar drug in Japan. After satisfactory experiments in animals, the drug
\vas used on hospitalized patients of syphilis. However, in I9 I 5, a representative
of the Research Institute for Infectious Diseases warned that an overdose of the
drug could be fatal and that researchers were still trying to figure out the right
dose for successful treatnlent (Yomiuri Shinbun 19 I 5b).
17. In I905, German dermatologists Erich Hoffmann and F. Schaudinn dis-
covered the syphilis pathogen. The author of the 1956 World History of Sexu-
ality (Weltgeschichte der Sexualitat) described the astounding healing rate with
Salvarsan: "I still remember ho\v the otherwise so skeptical Albert Neisser, who
has in the meantime become the director of the University Clinic for Dermatol-
ogy and Venereal Disease in Berlin, introduced an athlete to his students who
had the words 'love, suffer, forget' tattooed on his chest. 'Look, gentlemen,' ex-
plained Neisser, '[T]hat \vas the motto of this patient, and now it has proven
true. "Love"-that was love, "suffer"-that was the clap, and "forget"-that
is Salvarsan.'" (Morus I956:3I2).
I 8. Military physicians collected data on a great number of other factors as
well. Among these were the professional background of diseased soldiers, their
marital status, region of origin, and their place of service. They made intern a -
tional comparisons with European military organizations, comparisons with
rates of venereal diseases among prostitutes, and comparisons of different kinds
of venereal diseases (KRB 1927).
19. According to historian Louis Allen's findings (I984: 596), a sergeant
earned about 30 yen a month in 1945, a private first class 10.50 yen. Overseas,
a private first class earned 7.80 yen in ten days.
20. Referring to the military sexual slavery of mostly Korean and Chinese
girls and women between the ages of eleven and twenty-four, the Women's
International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan's Military Sexual Slavery, held in
Tokyo 7-I2 December 2000, pronounced the emperor of Japan guilty of crimes
against humanity. In Japan, the Asia-Japan Women's Resource Center under the
leadership of Matsui Yayori and the Center for Research and Documentation on
202 Notes to Pages 38-46
Japan's War Responsibility are committed mainly to research on elements of the

war in East Asia that haunt Japan to this day. For analyses in English, see Us-
tinia Dolgopol and Snehal Paranjape (1994); George Hicks (1995); Il-myon Kim
(1989); and Watanabe Kazuko (1994).
21. The Council for Former Army Comfort Women Hotline No. 110 (Jiigun
Ianfu I 10-ban Iinkai) was formed in 1991 in order to interview former comfort
women and members of the Imperial Army about comfort stations established
during World War II. As it was difficult to identify and contact people, the group
established a phone hotline, number 110, and later published the recorded calls
as a book (Yamasaki 1992).
22. After 1939, the German Wehrmacht designated certain brothels for mil-
itary personnel under the "Order for the Protection of German Defense Power"
("Verordnung zum Schutz der deutschen Wehrkraft") and forced women pri-
marily from Poland and Russia into sexual enslavement (Paul 1994: 103 - I 14).
Even women who were not forced into prostitution by the German military au-
thorities but had sexual relations with German military personnel were closely
observed and studied (Hartmann 1946). According to the Medical Department
of the United States Army, Wehrmacht brothels in Sicily were taken over by the
United States occupation forces when they landed there in 1942 (see Paul 1994:
155, footnote 13). Similarly, in August 1945, the Japanese Home Department
ordered regional police officials throughout the country to prepare special and
exclusive "comfort facilities" for the occupation army (Dower 1999: 124-125).
23. The comfort stations were officially reserved for soldiers. However, ac-
cording to the testimonies of some former comfort women, in the evenings civil-
ians paid to visit the enslaved women as well (Jiigun ianfu I Io-ban henshii iin-
kai 1992:76-77).
24. It is not clear how many comfort stations existed on the Japanese "main-
land." Hayashi Hiroshi (1993) noted that there were none on the mainland, but
former members of the Imperial Army testified that there were indeed comfort
stations there (Jiigun ianfu I Io-ban henshii iinkai 199 2 : 74).
25. Quoted in Yamazaki 1999 [1972]:69. Karayuki-san were Japanese
women who went overseas to work in brothels that generally were for non-
Japanese locals or foreign indentured laborers. Like other prostitutes at the time,
they left Japan to escape a life of severe poverty or were sold by their parents, of-
ten under false pretexts. They usually are differentiated from the much debated
comfort women, most of whom were not Japanese and were forced to perform
sexual labor for Japanese soldiers in various occupied countries in Asia during
Japan's imperialist expansion.
26. The Wassermann reaction, a method to detect antibodies in the blood of
people infected with syphilis, was developed by the bacteriologist and serologist
August Paul von Wassermann in 1906. Although only 70 percent of those in-
fected react positively, it is still the best method to test for syphilis today.
27. In the reports of the Bureau of Hygiene, "infectious diseases" and "syph-
ilis" were listed as two different categories. Here the results of the investigation
are interesting mostly as an indication of the spread of syphilis (Naimusho ei-
seikyoku 18931894:198; 1897:39; 1900:41; 1910:41; 1930:54).
28. Joseph E. de Becker was born in London and went to Japan in 1887 and
Notes to Pages 55-70 20 3
stayed more than thirty years. By his own account, he spoke Japanese like a na-
tive (De Becker 1917: 10). He was the legal advisor to the Tokyo and Yokohama
Foreign Board of Trade and stood counsel for important foreign banks in Ja-
pan. Among other books on japan's legal system, he published The Annotated
Civil Code of Japan (London: Butterworth; Yokohama: Kelly & Walsh, 1909-
1910) and Commentary on the Commercial Code of Japan (London: Butter-
worth, 1913).
CHAPTER 2
I. Markus Wawerzonnek (1984: 20), an author familiar with the bibliomet-

rical extent of the related literature, estimates that more than 10,000 mono-
graphs and articles related to sexuality were published in Germany between
1886 and 1933.
2. For a detailed analysis of Fujikawa Yii's career as a medical historian, see
Matsumura, Hirono, and Matsubara 1998; Fujikawa H. 1982; Fujikawa Yii sen-
sei kankokai 1988.
3. Yoshida was a prominent pedagogue who soon after his statement in the
newspaper reached the peak of his career as a professor at the Tokyo Joshi Koto
Shihan Gakko, a teachers' college for those training to teach at girls' schools,
which later became Ochanomizu University. He taught at the Tokyo Joshi Koto
Shihan Gakko and from 1916 to 1934 at the Imperial University of Tokyo. To-
day, he is remembered mostly for introducing German "social pedagogy" (So-
zialpadagogik) into Japan (Takemura H. 199 1 :49).
4. William Johnston has found that these convictions led one physician in
1889 to imply that a genetic relation existed between tuberculosis and syphilis,
suggesting that children of syphilitic parents often grew up to contract tubercu-
losis. Other physicians administered Salvarsan, the first effective remedy for
syphilis, to their tubercular patients (Johnston 1995: 19 2, 215).
5. Shimoda gave the title of the book as Science and Morals (Kagaku to
d6toku) and noted that he was acquainted with the author, but he did not men-
tion the author's name or whether the book was Japanese or written in a Euro-
American language (Shimoda 1908c:5).
6. For examples of these articles, see one of the leading pedagogical journals
that was published under the following titles: Dai Nippon K y6iku Gakkai Zas-
shi (1883-1897), Ky6iku K6h6 (1897-197), Teikyoku Kyoiku (199-1944),
and Dai Nippon Kyoiku (1944-1945); see also Robertson 2001.
7. The "crime of anal penetration" (keikanzai)~ which called for a punish-
ment of ninety days' work in a penitentiary, was briefly introduced during the
early Meiji period. A new penal code can1e into force in January 1882 that in ef-
fect legalized consensual anal intercourse between adult males. The term "anal
penetration" dropped out of the penal code entirely; instead, male-male and
male-female anal intercourse now fell under the broader category of "obscenity
crimes" (waisetsuzai) or "obscene acts" (waisetsu no shogyo), which also in-
cluded adultery, mistreatment of minors, rape, and pimping of minors (lwaya
1902:268; see also Pflugfelder 1999:168-169). Gregory Pflugfelder (1999:
163) has suggested that Japanese lawmakers felt that absolving male perpetra-
20 4 Notes to Pages 73-81
tors under the age of sixteen from criminal liability for their actions provided
sufficient consideration of their status as minors.
8. Similar descriptions can be found in German sexological writings. See, for
example, Hirschfeld 1926: 81, 250.
9. From the recorded notes of the memoirs of a village nurse who organized
a meeting of married couples to talk about family planning, it seems that some
parents solved the problem of how to have sex in a bedroom they shared with
their children by hitting their children on the head until they could be sure that
they were sleeping soundly (Oba Miyoshi, quoted in Huston 1992: 158).
10. A declared critic of naturalist literature, Mori Ogai had subscribed to
dominant tastes. for some time, which carne through in his themes and writing
style (Hijiya-Kirschnereit 1981: 101). His text Vita Sexualis was later recom-
mended frequently by contributors to sexological journals and other publica-
tions that dealt with sexual issues (Aoki S. 1934), as discussed in chapter 3.
I I. In 1905, three years after the founding of the German Society for the
Prevention of Venereal Disease in Berlin (Haeberle 1992: I I), Doi Keizo founded
the Japanese Society for the Prevention of Venereal Disease or Nihon Seibyo
Yobo Kyokai (Nihon kagakushi gakkai 1972:443).
12. Japanese scientists and intellectuals had been drawn to Europe and
America in increasing numbers, and by the beginning of the twentieth century
every high school student learned German or English. Doctors, lawyers, gov-
ernment officials, and engineers in particular became accustomed to both En-
glish and German. As of 19 I 2, the eight upper schools with approximately 800
students each were organized into three faculties, for law and literature, for
technical sciences and agriculture, and for medicine. In the first and third facul-
ties, nine hours of German and four hours of English were taught, with some-
what less taught in the second. Both contemporary Japanese and German au-
thors considered the influences of the German language, medicine, and sciences
to be dominant in Japan (Fujisawa 1912: 19; Witte 1918 : 67).
13. Other strategies of linking sexology in Japan to international trends in
the field were reports on sexology overseas and publications of Western sexolo-
gists in Japanese translation. Most of the sexological journals, many women's
journals, and other magazines reported on the progress of sexual reform, sexo-
logical research, and other sexual issues in Western countries (see, e.g., Fukuomo
1911; Fujikawa Y. 1916, 1922; Fujo Shinbun I923; Hentai Shinri 1921; Ida
1922; Kato K. 1927; Kawatani 1928; Oma 1936; Seikagaku Kenkyu 1936;
Tonda 1936; Yasuda T. 1936). In addition, Purity published an article by Ger-
man hygienist Alfred Blaschko in translation (Burashuko 1914). Sexological Re-
search (Seikagaku Kenkyu) printed articles by leading German sexologist Iwan
Bloch (Buroho 1920), by Max Hodann on Magnus Hirschfeld's impressions of
his visit to Japan (Hodan 1936; Ode 1936), and on Wilhelm Reise's concerns
about the crises of sex (Reise 1936); the Women~s Newspaper (Fujo Shinbun)
printed Ellen Key's ideas about motherhood (Kei 19 I 8); and Popular Medicine
ran a series of articles by Mary Stopes about children's sex education (Sutopusu
19 2 4, 19 2 5a - b).
14. Thomas W. Laqueur (2003) has described the complicated history of
both Tissot's book and the cultural meanings of masturbation in the Western
world.
15. Beard attributed the causes of neurasthenia to "overpressure of the
higher nerve centers," claiming that it was a pathology peculiar to the American
continent and unique to the American lifestyle (see Rabinbach 1990: 153). For
a detailed analysis of the discourse of neurasthenia in Europe and the United
States, see Anson Rabinbach (1990: 146-178). Hugo Shapiro (1990) has ex-
pertly traced the history of neurasthenia in China, where Japanese and European
concepts of the pathology superseded more traditional notions of energy loss.
16. Shimoda also propagated the roles of mothers and fathers according to
the theories of German pedagogue and social reformer Johann Heinrich Pesta-
lozzi (Shimoda 1904a:320-322).
17. A broad range of magazines and journals began to deal with sex edu-
cation, including Women's Review (Fujin Koron) (Ichikawa 1919); Women's
Newspaper (Fujo Shinbun 1923, 1930; Nagai 1919b-g, 1920a-d); Popular
Medicine (Tsuzoku Igaku) (Iijima 1932); Perverse Psyche (Hentai Shinri) (Inoue
19 2 3); Purity (Kakusei 1932; Misumi 1920); and Sexological Research (Seika-
gaku Kenkyu) (Kurotaki 1936; Nii 1936).
CHAPTER 3
I. By the 1920S, the Western book with the most Japanese translations was
Darwin's On the Origin of Species. For an overview of the reception of Dar-
winism in Japan, see Shimao 1981; Suzuki Z. 1983: 22-3 I. Parts of Yamamoto's
translation of Havelock Ellis's work were published between 1926 and 1932.
Yamamoto also published shorter excerpts of Ellis's work in Birth Control Re-
view and Sex and Society (Sei to Shakai).
2. Among the 350 respondents were 20 women (Yamamoto Senji 1921g:
325). Yamamoto never mentioned the women in publications of the survey's
results and systematically and statistically analyzed only the results from male
students and, later, other men. One reason for this may have been that the au-
diences at his lectures were overwhelmingly male. When women came they at-
tended in small nUlnbers; one lecture was attended by one woman and a hun-
dred men (Yamamoto Senji 1921g:322). Yamamoto did, however, lecture on
both male and feluale sexuality (Yamamoto Senji I92Ig:321) and also wrote ar-
ticles exclusively on sex education for girls and women (i.e., Yamamoto Senji
1924a-b, 19 26b ).
3. Outlook was founded in 1918 and modeled after Theodore Roosevelt's
weekly of the same name; it contained mostly articles on current issues. Okuma
contributed at least one or two articles to each issue in which he commented crit-
ically on current issues (Idditti 1940 : 394 - 395).
4. Yamamoto wrote two articles on the sex education of women (I924a,
1924b), but only after World War II were girls' and women's sex lives surveyed
to the same extent as boys' and men's. Acknowledging Yamamoto and Yasuda's
pioneering role in "scientific" sex research, Asayama Shin'ichi published the first
survey of both sexes in 1949. Concerned about the consequences of the war
on the sexual morale of youth, Saotome Kenichi, Arai Ichin), Watanabe Tetsuro
(Saotome at el. 1953), and soon quite a few others followed suit in the early
1950s. A host of large-scale surveys, to which I shall turn in the epilogue, fol-
lowed in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990S.
5. For example, Yasuda translated Sigmund Freud's Studien zur Hysterie und
Vorlesungen zur Einfuhrung in die Psychoanalyse in 193 I as Seishin bunseki
nyumon. He also was one of Yamamoto's closest allies in the birth control move-
ment and became its leader after Yamamoto's death in 1929.
6. For similar remarks on the connection between social class and sexual
morality, see, for example, Yoshida K. 1916; Abe 1918, 1927b; Honma 1918a-
b, 1924; Ishige 1943a-e. Carol Gluck has noted that according to Japanese
agrarian ideologists, urban life was marked by various "social diseases" (shakai
no yamai) or "large city fevers" (tokainetsu), which endangered the moral in-
tegrity of young people from the countryside (Gluck 1985: 161). The editors of
the Journal of the Sociological Society also frequently expressed their "desire to
awaken a sense of duty among the upper class" (see Ambaras 1998: 10).
7. For those who had had sexual intercourse, questions included the time of
year that their first intercourse had taken place; whether the respondent was
"active," "neutral," or "passive"; whether special conditions (e.g., alcohol or
peer pressure) had influenced the encounter; the age, occupation, and social sta-
tus of the partner (i.e., unmarried, married, or prostitute); and whether respon-
dents had noticed changes in their sex life or behavior and attitude toward the
other sex following the first sexual intercourse. Those respondents who had not
yet had sexual intercourse were asked why. The possible answers were that they
had no particular reason; because the thought of sex disgusted them; for reli-
gious or ethical reasons; for aesthetic reasons; as a gift to their beloved; for hy-
genic reasons; to avoid venereal diseases; or due to lack of economic resources
required to start a family (Yamamoto Senji 19 24c:21 5).
8. In this example, the strangers' gender remains unclear. Here, as in Yama-
moto's other writings, the possibility of same-sex encounters is neither explicitly
mentioned nor explicitly excluded, but it is ignored as a topic necessitating a dis-
cussion in their own right.
9. Quite a few of the survey's questions dealt with first sexual feelings, de-
liberate ejaculation, and masturbation. Yamamoto and Yasuda asked whether
respondents had experienced ejaculation during sleep (musei); when it had hap-
pened for the first time; whether they observed any regularities and whether they
saw a connection between the frequency of ejaculation during sleep and the sea-
son, moon phase, or day of the week; and whether they observed peculiarities in
their emotional condition or state of health prior to the ejaculation or on the fol-
lowing day. They also were asked to describe the dreams they had afterward and
were encouraged to describe their experiences of ejaculation in instances of im-
patience or surprise, e.g., due to an exam or when they had just caught the train.
The next set of questions concerned masturbation (jii). Questions included their
age at the time they first masturbated; whether they asked somebody about the
meaning of masturbation or whether they knew themselves; when and how they
masturbated; how long and how often they masturbated; how they reacted when
they first heard about the supposedly harmful consequences of masturbation;

how they would describe their health and emotional state; and whether they had
ever lived in a group setting, e.g., in the military or in a dormitory. If they an-
swered yes to the last question, they also were asked to describe what type of
group it was and whether that lifestyle had had an impact on their sex life (Ya-
mamoto Senji I924C:2I2-2I4).
10. In Germany, Hirschfeld had begun examinations of the sexual behavior
of young men in 1903 (Haeberle 1992: I I). A quarter-century later, Alfred C.
Kinsey, honored as the founder of empirical sex research in the United States,
came to similar conclusions in Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (I948) and
Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953).
I I . Jii was a translation of the German Ipsation (derived from the Latin
word ipse for "self"). Hirschfeld had introduced Ipsation in his writings for sim-
ilar reasons (Hirschfeld 1926:248-249). Other Japanese sexologists who spe-
cifically researched autoerotic practices also used the German word Onanie
(onanii), probably for the same reasons (see, e.g., Kitano 1920, 1921).
12. In his numerous books, Iwan Bloch identified himself as "Spezialarzt fur
Sexualleiden" (special physician for sexual maladies). In 1919, Das Sexual/eben
unserer Zeit appeared in its twelfth edition, and 70,000 copies had been sold
(Bloch 1919 [I906]: prologue). Sawada Junjirl> also used the word seigaku;
Miyatake Gaikotsu and Kurigayawa Hakuson more often used seiyokugaku,
while Nagai Sen tended to speak of seikagaku (see Oshikane 1977:7-10).
13. As Theodore M. Porter (1986: 27- 30) has shown, the gathering of pop-
ulation statistics was motivated by the hope of improving living conditions and
solving social problems. It reflected a search for reforms and the conviction that
the statistics would deliver explanations for diseases, death, and crime. Yama-
moto brought his views of the theory and practice of science with him when he
returned to Kyoto and began to lecture and do research on human sexuality.
14. This was true not only for Japanese sociologists but also for their Amer-
ican colleagues. The founding fathers of American sociology also formulated
their view of the world and their purpose in it in terms of "social reforms"
before making sociology an academic subject. In their opinion, the science of
society should be primarily an instrument of social practice, and social prac-
tice should be directed at the conscious solution of social problems (Bauman
1995: 10 7).
15. For a detailed critique of the government's influence on personnel deci-
sions and the involvement of university professors in party politics, see Yoshino
1927, 19 28 .
16. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Katl> Hiroyuki, one of the co-
founders of the Meiji Six Society (Meirokusha), retreated from his original ideas
of justice and freedom. Around the turn of the century, Kat6 ceased to promote
a social Darwinist concept of social evolution and the survival of the fittest and
instead began to favor the notion of a social model that placed emphasis on so-
cial harmony. Kato adopted the idea of the state as a "social organism" and
modified it so that it referred to a concept of society that supported the status
quo. The welfare of society was equivalent to the welfare of the state. Patriotism
corresponded with loyalty to the emperor. If the state was a social organism, the
emperor was at its heart and had to be protected as the most important organ
of this organism (see Kawamura N. 1990:67).
17. Kagawa Toyohiko's engagement for the poor inspired biographers to ex-
amine his life and work even during his lifetime. See, e.g., Carola D. Barth
(1936); Robert Schildgen (1988); Karl-Heinz Schell (1994).
18. The Labor Farmer Party was dedicated to achieving social equality by
parliamentary means. In December 1926, Oyama Ikuo became party leader.
Under the guidance of the Communist Party of Japan, it served as a legal front
for the far Left. The Labor Farmer Party was dissolved in 1928. Despite increas-
ing doubts within the Left about the value of a new party, Oyama and Kawa-
kami Hajime founded a second party of the same name in November 1929 (see
Hunter 1984: 180-181).
19. Journals and magazines such as Hentai Shinri and even regional news-
papers in both japan proper and the colonies, such as Yorozu Choho, Kochi Shin-
bun, Tokushima Nichinichi Shinbun, Tokuyama Nippo, Hokuriku Taimusu,
and Niigata Shinbun noted the increasing number of journals and books deal-
ing with sexual issues (Seiron 1927).
20. Subscriptions were offered for three months (I yen, 20 sen), six months
(2 yen, 20 sen), and one year (4 yen, 30 sen) (Sei November 1927: 84). Erotic
tales also were common in other journals and magazines, such as Criminology
(Hanzai Kagaku) and Sex Research (Sei no Kenkyu). See, e.g., Mitamura Engyo
(19 21 ); Miyagawa Hiro (I93oa-f, 193 la-b).
21. Japan's first modern census, from 1920, spurred population studies on
actual japanese data. Among the countries Yokoyama compared with japan
were Russia, several European countries, the United States, and several South
American countries (Yokoyama M. 1920: 51-52).
22. The Rational Sex Series was published infrequently in Boston from 197
on. It included works on sex education, such as "Sex Instruction for Women"
(1919), "What Every Boy Should Know" (1924), and "What Every Young
Woman Should Know" (1924), as well as translations of German-language trea-
tises on sexology, psychoanalysis, and dream interpretation.
23. The issues of September and October 1920 are printed with the line "all
articles of this journal are prohibited from reproduction" on the cover.
24. After World War II, Ota served as a counselor for sexual problems (Ota
T. 1954a) and wrote articles for popular magazines. In Marital Life (Fufu Sei-
katsu), for example, he described new American techniques for the enlargement
of breasts in an article entitled "Beautiful Breasts are a Married Lady's Greatest
Weapon," suggesting that these techniques would also soon become available in
Japan (Ota T. 1954b).
25. Advice columns had become common, especially in women's magazines
and daily newspapers. Yamada Waka, for example, answered the questions of
readers in the column "Advice for Women" ("Josei sodan") in the Tokyo Asahi
Shinbun (see Yamada 1989 [1983]).
26. With a broadcast time of sixteen hours per day and a monthly fee of 75
sen for a subscription, radio enjoyed a rapid rise in the number of its listeners,
from 343,000 in 1926 to over 1,000,000 in 1933, and drove the print media to
Notes to Pages I18-127 209
lower their prices and invent new marketing strategies (Present Day Japan 1934).
As Sano Sumiyo from the Nihon Hoso Kyokai (NHK) told me, most sound doc-
uments from this time were destroyed during World War II. NHK program notes
reveal, however, that Yamamoto Senji, Nagai Hisomu, and several other profes-
sors from universities in Tokyo, Nara, Kagoshima, Osaka, and Kyoto spoke on
the radio about sex education, birth control, and eugenics. In 1928, Yamamoto
spoke on a total of nineteen occasions on Radio Osaka to tens of thousands
of listeners. Similarly, Nagai Hisomu spoke a total of thirteen times between
10 May 1927 and 26 July 1927 on "Heredity and Eugenics" and on II July
1929 on "Love from a Biological Perspective." Similar themes were broadcast
from other radio stations in Okayama, Kyoto, Hiroshima, Kochi, Matsue, Ku-
mamoto, Fukuoka, Nagoya, Kanazawa, and Sendai (Nogami 1932; Nihon hoso
kyokai Kansai shibu 193 2 ; Present Day Japan 19 26, 1934).
CHAPTER 4
I. According to Camille Limoges' analysis of public controversies, each

"world of relevance" or group involved in a controversy has much latitude to
construct in its own way both the various entities that inhabit the controversy
and the relationship between those entities (Limoges 1993 :420).
2. The director of the Research Society on the Population Question in Japan
announced in 1934 that Japan's birth rate was twice as high as Europe's and its
death rate 50 percent higher. The situation in the colonies was even more ex-
treme, with a natural popular increase of 19.4 per 1,000 in Korea and 19.5 per
1,000 in Formosa. In 1933, the total population of the Japanese empire had
reached 92 million (Shimomura 1934: 58).
3. Emigration hardly eased the population problem in Japan proper. By
1934, only about 600,000 Japanese lived abroad, while there were 300,000 im-
migrants from Korea alone in Japan (Shimomura 1934: 58),
4. Fujika\va Yii did not reveal his source, and the number may in fact stem
from the first half of the 19 IOS rather than from 19 19. Takayasu Itsuko provided
the number of criminal convictions of abortion providers between 1905 and
1955. Her data show about 600 convictions per year during the years 1910-
19 14 and a sharply decreased rate thereafter, e.g., 545 in 19 1 5, 387 in 1919,
170 in 1929, and 188 in 1939 (see Hardacre 1997: 50).
5. Other homicide categories were "killing by someone else," "murder pre-
meditated and with specific motives," "killing a direct relative or an in-law," and
"incitement to murder" (Nihon teikoku shihosho 19 2 5 :362-387).
6. Similarly, zoologist Ishikawa Chiyomatsu expressed his doubts about the
steady population growth that was feared by birth control activists. He re-
minded them that in Germany as well, World War I had served as a "counter-
balance" (Ishikawa 1928). For a characterization of Ishikawa Chiyomatsu's ca-
reer, see Bartholomew (19 89: 59, 75, 261).
7. The Tokyo Asahi Shinbun received tens of thousands of letters daily. A se-
lection from the column "Advice for Women" ("Josei sodan") was first pub-
lished in 1983 as the eighth volume of Famous Works on Modern Women~s Prob-
lems (Kindai fujin mandai meicho zenshu). Readers' questions were categorized
into housing, women's problems, love, law, economics, and marriage (Yamada
19 8 9 [19 8 3]).
8. Abe was referring here to Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582) and Toyotomi
Hideyoshi (1535-1598).
9. On the central role of Margaret Sanger in the American birth control
movement and her international crusade, see Gordon (1983).
10. Among others, Nagai Hisomu expressed this concern. He noted that the
civilization of a culture went hand in hand with its degeneration. Degeneration
in turn resulted in ever-later marriages, which meant that middle- and upper-
class men and women in particular were wasting valuable reproductive years.
Nagai identified the ideal age for having children as being between twenty-four
and twenty-five for men and between seventeen and eighteen for women (Man-
ch6ho 19I6).
I I. By 19 I 7, 170,000 copies of this text had been printed in the United
States. The version that appeared in 1920 was already the tenth edition. Until
World War I, Sanger had close ties to the Left, but thereafter she increasingly
turned to middle- and upper-class women and to the medical profession. In the
1920 edition, the passages "birth control as a means in the class struggle," "rec-
ommendation of abortions" as a means of birth control, and other radical pas-
sages had been removed. The text, which Yamamoto translated in 1922, was the
toned-down version from 1920 (Ogino M. 1994: 83).
12. Kutsumi and her husband Mitamura were involved in the organization
of communist cells in Hokkaido, for which Kutsumi was eventually incarcerated
and tortured (Kutsumi in Hane 1988: 157).
13. The application form required information on the physical condition of
the entire family (assuming that the couple already had five children). Husband
and wife had to provide information on their occupation, age, and physical con-
dition and the number and sex of their siblings. They were asked to provide the
date of their wedding, the current number of family members, and their monthly
income. In the rubric on children, they had to list the sex and age of all children
including, if applicable, the age at which they had died. A major part of the ap-
plication form was reserved for the applicant's reasons for wanting to practice
birth control (Sanji Chosetsu Hyoron April 1925: advertisement section).
14. The foundation of the Harmonization Society in 1919 under Home Min-
ister Tokonami Takejiro was an attempt to co-opt major sections of the labor
movement in the hope of countering its growing strength. The society had re-
gionally organized branches in factories controlled by a central coordinating or-
ganization, but its mediation in disputes was rarely successful. Despite its short-
comings, the society conducted extensive and valuable research into labor and
social problems, fostered educational work, and had some influence on govern-
ment policy in such developments as the growth of labor exchanges (Hunter
I984: 106-107)
15. These authors were apparently referring to Genesis 38: 8 -10: "Then Ju-
dah said to Onan, 'Lie with your brother's wife and fulfill your duty to her as a
brother-in-law to produce offspring for your brother.' But Onan knew that the
offspring would not be his; so whenever he lay with his brother's wife, he spilled
his semen on the ground to keep from producing offspring for his brother."
Notes to Pages 145-I58 211
16. For a discussion of competing theories in Japan, see Julie Rousseau

(199 8 : 197- 21 3).
17. Up to the present day and despite the legalization of the pill in 1999, con-
doms continue to be the most commonly used contraceptive in Japan (Inoue and
Ehara 1995: 69). For an overview of the recent debate before the lifting of the
ban on the pill, see Marumoto (1995), and Maruyama, Raphael, and Djerassi
(1996). Only in 1974 did the Ministry of Health and Welfare approve of the in-
trauterine device, even though IUDs had been in use in other countries for a de-
cade or more (Norgren 1998).
CHAPTER 5
I. The Meiji Civil Code introduced the prohibition of the publication of
nude images in 1899. In 1900 the authorities began to amend regulations for
publications that violated customs and morals (rather than the political order).
Enacted in March 1900, the Peace Police Law consolidated and supplemented
existing law-and-order legislation. Initially, "anti-government" groups referred
mostly to the nascent labor movement, but the law also included a ban on po-
litical activity by soldiers, police, priests, women, and minors (Article 5). The
Peace Police Law was modified in 1922 and 1926. Its significance decreased with
the enactment of the Peace Preservation Law of 1925, but it was not abolished
until October 1945 (Hunter 1984:166). Richard H. 11itchell (1973) has dis-
cussed the creation of the Peace Preservation Law in detail.
2. The Peace Preservation Law also was applied to other groups. Among
them were the new religions, which were denounced as "pseudo-religions" or
"quackery" and accused of open hedonism. Although most religions supported
family ideology, the public tended to believe the wildest stories and was con-
vinced that charismatic leaders seduced their female followers (Garon 1986:
293- 2 9 8 ).
3. Censorship legislation during the late nineteenth and the first half of the
twentieth century has been examined by James L. Huffman 1984; Gregory Kasza
1988:61-65; and Jay Rubin 1984:43-69. On present-day debates about
pornography, see Peter Herzog (1993: 64-68).
4. Yamamoto had close ties to the Communist Party but was never a
nlember. Nonetheless, memorial festivals for his death-March 8 in Tokyo and
March 15 in Kyoto-incited communist protest demonstrations. The Commu-
nist Party honored him with a posthumous membership after World War II
(Beckmann and Okubo 19 69: 173).
5. An announcement of this twenty-page special section in the March 1935
edition of the magazine Women's Review can be found in Central Review (Chua
Karon March 193 5). Jennifer Robertson (1999) has analyzed the scandalization
of lesbian "love suicides" in contemporary media.
6. My calculation is based on data provided in Naimusho keihokyoku 1981
(316-334,255-267) and 1986 (1:151-178, 2:213-348). For detailed lists of
censored newspapers, magazines, and books from the ~1eiji, Taisho, and Showa
eras, see Naimusho keihokyoku (1976a-b, 1977a-b, 1981, 1986) and Akama
(I9 2 7)
7. Whereas some Japanese intellectuals consciously differentiated between

jinshu (race, biological) and minzoku (ethnic nation, biological and cultural),
others used the two terms interchangeably (Doak 1997; Robertson 2001). Na-
gai Hisomu, for instance, seemed to have seen the German Volk~ the Japanese
minzoku~ and the English "race" as equivalents (Otsubo and Bartholomew
1998: 547). Koya Yoshio and the other authors of Racial Biological Research
used minzoku~ jinshu~ and jinrui interchangeably and alternately translated
these words as Yolk and Rasse (Minzoku Seibutsugaku Kenkyu-Rassenbiolo-
gische Untersuchungen). Hiratsuka Raich6 first promoted a sterilization law in
19 17 for the sake of "racial improvement," which she referred to as shuzoku
kairyo (Hiratsuka 19 83 [19 I 6]: 33 S).
8. As Sumiko Otsubo and James Bartholomew (1998) have pointed out, Na-
gai took over eugenic institutionalization efforts left unfinished by others. Hi-
ratsuka Raicho had made an initial attempt at eugenic legislation and led an un-
successful campaign to enact a marriage restriction law. The incorporation of
eugenic ideas in the curriculum of higher education had been advocated first by
Naruse Jinz6. Yamanouchi Shigeo had established the first eugenic association,
the Greater Japan Eugenics Society.
9. An abridged English version of Fujime's article appeared in Gender and
Japanese History (Fujime, "One Midwife's Life," 1999).
10. Nagai remained unsuccessful until the end of the Second World War, but
in 1949 the National Institute of Genetics was founded (Morris-Suzuki 1998).
I I. These articles were printed in the journal Racial Biological Research
(Minzoku Seibutsugaku Kenkyu-Rassenbiologische Untersuchungen) in vol-
ume I of 1936, volume 5 of 1938, and volume 7 of 1939; see also Koya and Tak-
abatake 1939.
12. Matsubara Yoko (1998, 2000) and Sumiko Otsubo (1999) provide a de-
tailed discussion of the attempts by Nagai and other eugenicists to establish eu-
genic legislation.
13. For the complete text of the National Eugenics Law, see Tiana Norgren
2001: 140-145.
14. However, the reproductive rate was almost three times as high in 1941
as in 1940-it rose from 3.9 per 1,000 to 9.2 per 1,000-and it peaked at 14
per 1,000 in 1942. In 1943 it fell sharply, to 7.1, and it decreased drastically
thereafter, reaching minus 22.9 in 1945 (BSOPM 1957: II).
15. In the health records of the army and navy, "hysteria" was listed as one
of several mental diseases afflicting enlisted men (e.g., Kaigunsho 1909; Riku-
gunsho 1917).
16. "Reben" resembles the German word for "life" (Leben). For a great va-
riety and number of advertisements for hormonal extracts, see the advertisement
sections of Nihon oyobi Nihonfin I May 1922; Fujokai May 1928; Fujin no
Tomo November 1929, March 1935; Tsuzoku Igaku January 1927, November
I9 2 9, February I93 2, January I939, October 1940; Josan no Tomo November
1941). Tokkapin alone was advertised in print media as diverse as Japan and the
Japanese~ Popular Medicine~ and Present Day Japan.
17. Neurasthenia was frequently discussed in Japanese popular medical jour-
nals (see, e.g., Nagahama 1925a-b; Ando 1930; Fujinami 1932; Matsumoto
Notes to Pages 176 -181 21 3
1937; Sugirnoto 1937) as well as in publications in other countries (see, e.g.,

Neuman 1974, 1975; Mosse 199 6 : 84- 85; Porter and Hall 1995 :77,214; Sha-
piro 1999).
18. Women's Club was one of the largest women's magazines in the interwar
period. It started with a circulation of 40,000 copies in October 1920. By the
beginning of the 193 os, circulation had reached half a million copies and thus
took a share of almost 50 percent of the market for all women's magazines
(Maeda 1993 [1973]: 21 9).
19. For a detailed discussion of the contents of this encyclopedia and the
ways in which it reflected attempts to create and define the "normal woman,"
see Friihstiick forthcoming.
20. Takeuchi Shigeyo's role as eugenicist and one of only a few female par-
ticipants in the Racial Hygiene Study Group has been highlighted by Sumiko
Otsubo (1999).
2 I. This connection was also frequently made in newspaper reports on the
development of the physical constitution of male and female youth. See, e.g.,
Chuo Shinbun (1913); Yomiuri Shinbun I9I5a; Hochi Shinbun (I9I6a-b).
22. A complete translation of the law can be found in Norgren 2001:
145- 1 55.
23. About the ideal man, readers of this encyclopedia learned only that he
had to be able to provide for the household (Date 1951b:28).
24. In the mid-1960s, Koya argued against the legalization of the contracep-
tive pill by pointing out that there was no need to hurry to legalize a method of
birth control that might have side effects, especially when abortion was legal and
other kinds of birth control were available. In fact, the Family Planning Federa-
tion of Japan, over which he presided, opposed the legalization of the pill, as
did other interest groups, including the Japanese Family Planning Association,
the Japanese Association of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the Japanese Mid-
wives Association, the LDP's Women's Bureau, and a designated abortion pro-
viders' group (Norgren 1998: 83).
25. As Matsubara Y6ko's research attests, eugenic thinking and practice
among physicians vvho performed sterilizations and abortions as well as among
potential parents who agreed to them have been firmly established ever since the
late 19 50S. In her recent research, Matsubara has found an unspoken agreement
between physicians and potential parents that a child with disabilities would
be undesirable because of the degree of discrimination it would suffer in Japan
(conversation with Matsubara Y6ko, July 1999).
26. A complete translation of the law can be found in Norgren 2001;
155- 1 58 .
27. When Nagai Hisomu died in 1956, obituaries also carefully refrained
fronl referring to his wartime entanglement in racial hygiene politics (Fukuda
1957; Koike Shige 1957; Wakabayashi 1957). In Japan, Takagi Masashi (19 89,
1991, 1993) was one of the first scholars to investigate Nagai's role in prewar
and wartime Japanese eugenic policies.
28. For more biographical notes on Yamamoto Sugi, see also Akagawa
1999: 282.
29. In the introduction to his report, Asayama (1949) acknowledged Yama-
moto's pioneering role in sex research. For "masturbation" he used jii, a term
Yamamoto had introduced to emphasize the normalcy of the practice. Most
other postwar sex researchers, however, unknowingly returned to the more ac-
cusatory language of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Only in
the 1960s was the English term "masturbation" adopted.
3 o. For Okada, the crucial question for assessing the degree of sexual
knowledge was whether children knew where they came from. According to the
result of his study, only 20 percent knew the answer; 39.8 percent gave a wrong
answer, and the rest had no idea. Equally worrisome to Okada was that the pri-
mary source of sexual knowledge was friends (20 percent), followed by family
members (18 percent), books (15 percent), teachers (6 percent), and the stu-
dents' own imaginations (6 percent).
3 I. The group's sample consisted of 452 third-year urban high school stu-
dents from three different schools (96 boys and 125 girls) and 23 I middle school
graduates from rural areas (81 boys and 150 girls) (Saotome et el. 1953).
EPILOGUE
I. Between April 1998 (when Viagra was approved in the United States) and
January 1999 (when it was approved in Japan) alone, hundreds of newspapers
and magazines reported on the drug. Articles and article series appeared in me-
dia as diverse as the news magazine Aera, the business magazine Nikkei Biji-
nesu, popular science and health magazines such as Nikkei Saiensu and Kurashi
to Kenko, the women's magazine Fujin Koron, liberal magazines such as Shukan
Kinyobi, and right-wing papers such as Sankei Shinbun and Shokun!
2. In the United States, physicians differentiate between physical and non-
physical causes of impotence. Diabetes, medication for high blood pressure, har-
dening of the arteries leading to the penis, and the effects of prostate surgery
rank highest among the most common physical causes, while depression is con-
sidered the number-one psychological cause (Leavy 1998).
3. Concerns about estrogen contamination resulting from widespread use of
the pill seem misplaced, given that the urine of a woman in her fortieth week of
pregnancy contains 10,000 times as much estrogen as that of a woman taking
the pill (Kitamura K. 1999 :44).
4. Medical doctor Leonore Tiefer (1994:365) has noted that definitions and
norms for erections are absent from the medical literature. She concludes that
the assumption that everyone knows what a "normal" erection is is central to
the universalization and reiflcation that supports both the medicalization of male
sexuality and phallocentrism.
5. In her discussion of the debates over the legalization of the low-dose con-
traceptive pill, Tiana Norgren (1998) showed that mainstream women's groups
as well as family planning organizations were rather ambivalent about the ap-
proval of the low-dose contraceptive pill. She persuasively argued that this am-
bivalence is to be attributed to the legacy of the aggressive pronatal policy of the
1920S, 193 os, and especially the I940S, Japanese drug scandals of the 1960s,
and concerns about side effects, among other factors.
6. In his analysis of the cultural context of condom use in present-day Japan,

Samuel Coleman mentioned four factors for its widespread acceptance: easy
use that does not require a medical examination or adjustment; successful mar-
keting strategies; availability through grocery stores, pharmacies, vending ma-
chines, supermarkets, mail order, and home delivery; and a lack of reliable al-
ternatives (Coleman 198 I : 29).
7 . .Nly analysis of the "rhetoric of reform" regarding the social welfare sys-
tem for the elderly revealed that the Japanese administration reacted to the ag-
ing of society with a massive propagation of a common feeling of solidarity for
the welfare of the community. Instead of the government investing in the estab-
lishment of affordable professional care institutions and a significant reform
of existing homes for the elderly, this development means that women are more
or less left alone with the problems and difficulties of caring for older people in
their homes (Friihstiick 2002).
8. When deciding whether or not to have a(nother) child, women typically
consider the cost of having and raising a child, the size of their housing, the psy-
chological and physical burdens, and the possibilities of harlTIonizing the duties
of child-rearing with their own interests and work (Inoue und Ehara 1995: 5).
Due to the pathetically low contribution of their male partners to both childcare
(Ishii-Kuntz I994) and household chores (Imada 1997: 5), these duties generally
rest entirely on women's shoulders. For a broader analysis of women's roles in
education, the household, work, and politics, see my article on gender inequity
in present-day Japan (Friihstuck 1999).
9. According to the 1990 More Report (Moa ripoto NOW) on sexual be-
havior and attitudes of women, 4.8 percent of 2,000 women surveyed between
the ages of thirteen and sixty-one use the high-dose pill; I I percent do not use
any contraceptive whatsoever. The report notes that 60.3 percent have had at
least one abortion, and 24.8 percent have had t,vo (Imamura, Vnno, and Ishi-
maru 1990:670).
10. In the July 1999 newsletter of the Ministry of Education, The Education
Ministry~s Work (Monbusho no Hataraki), the ministry reported that its sex ed-
ucation guidelines of 1986, Guidance on Sexual Matters within Student Guid-
ance (Seito shido ni okeru sei ni kan suru shidiJ), had been replaced by new and
significantly altered guidelines. In 1999, the ministry published a new I05-page
document in which for the first time sex education is recommended for children
from kindergarten through high school. The discussion of "concrete examples"
such as respect for the other sex and "compensated dating" is encouraged
(http://en.tokyo-shoseki.co.jp/kyouikukai/k9907/knewsI.htm).
I I. Since the 1970s, private organizations have attempted to develop a more
diverse sexual pedagogy and to offer advice on sexual problems and have been
engaged in the thorough, integrative study of sexuality. Most visibly, the Coun-
cil for Education and Research on "Humans and Sex/Sexuality" ('Ningen to Sei'
Kyoiku Kenkyu Kyogikai), founded in 1982, criticized the kind of sex education
the Ministry of Education had been promoting and demanded its reexamination
according to the guidelines quoted in the above epigraph. Questioning the offi-
cial guidelines for sex education that promote a "healthy, desirable, correct"
sexual behavior, sexual pedagogue Yamamoto Naogeki (Yamamoto Senji's son)

demanded a fruitful combination of "sexual human rights" with "scientific sex
education" (Hatta 2000).
12. AIDS, more than any other sexually transmitted disease, is another cru-
cial issue in sex education in Japanese secondary schools. Instruction about HIV
and AIDS often is designed to represent AIDS as the disease of others, whether
these others are homosexuals or Japanese women who have casual relationships
with foreigners (Kawahara 1996: 157-158). This approach only reflects public
debates about the causes of HIV that have leaned toward blaming foreigners and
homosexuals and that have contributed significantly to discriminatory attitudes
toward people with AIDS. After years of neglecting the disease after it was first
reported in the New York Times in 1981, the chair of a government commission
charged with formulating AIDS policy declared that the syndrome was now a
danger for "people living ordinary lives," and proclaimed 1987 Japan's "AIDS
Year One" (Treat 1994:651-652).
13. Sample sizes are still growing. In June 2001, the internet corporation In-
fopuranto created a questionnaire on sexual behavior and satisfaction within
marriage under the guidance of a university professor from Chafu Gakuen Col-
lege. The questionnaire was sent out via email to 72,000 men and women. The
results were published in the Asahi Shinbun.
14. In the study presented by Eric D. Widmer, Judith Treas, and Robert
Newcomb (1998), data from a standardized questionnaire collected in twenty-
four countries from large and nationally representative samples were used and
cluster analysis was applied for the first time in a cross-national paper on sexual
attitudes.
15. The women in the More Report were further categorized as 255 stu-
dents, 133 housekeepers, 1,292 white-collar workers, 30 self-employed work-
ers, 257 housewives, and 20 undefined (Imamura, Unno, and Ishimaru 1990:
656). A second volume of the More Report, this one on men, came out a few
years after the first.
16. The prime minister's office collects all large-scale (about 1,000 respon-
dents and above) public opinion surveys on a wide range of social, political, and
economic issues, from opinions on Article 9 of the constitution to views on pre-
marital sex, and publishes them annually as the Yearbook of Public Opinion
Surveys {Seron chosa nenkan}.
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Wawerzonnek, Markus. 1984. Implizite Sexualpadagogik in der Sexualwis-
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Index
Abe Isoo, 13,96,97,103-104,109, Association for Statistics (Tokei Kyokai),

129 - 130; birth control movement 21
and, 133, 134, 140, 150; censorship
and, I59;eugenksand, 147-148 Bartholomew, James, 9, 2I2n8
abortion: approval of contraceptive pill Beard, George M., 81
and, 190, 2I3n24; birth control "biochemical race index," 22
movement and, 142-144, 150-151; birth control: advertising and, 116-118,
feminist views on, 123; frequency 117, 145, 146; approval of oral con-
of, in I990s, 190; late marriage and, tracepti ves and, I 88 - I 9 3; counsel-
149; postwar legislation and, 177; ing centers and, 137-140; eugenics
regulation of, 120-122, 127-128 and, 134, 138, 140, 147-148; femi-
abstinence, as means of birth control, nist views on, 123 - 128; leftist vs.
145 bourgeois differences on, 134 - I 3 6;
adolescents, sexual behavior of, 193-197 legislation against, I I 8, 163; options
advertising: birth control and, I I 6 -I 18, for, 123, 125, 130, 13 I, 137, 142,
117, 145, 146; hormone products 144-147; petitions for legalization
and, 169-172; in sexological jour- of, 120, 150-151; shaping of move-
nals, 109-1 I 5 ment for, 118-120, 130-144;
advice columns, III, 208n25, 209n7 See also abortion; condom use; eu-
AIDS prevention, 188, 190, 192, 216nI2 genics; sterilization
Akillloto Seiji, 104, 145 Birth Control Review (Sanji Chosetsu
Akiyama Yoshio, 101, 103-104, 158 Hyoron) (journal), 83-85, III,
Allen, Louis, 20InI9 14 0
Ando Kakuichi, 179 birth rate: contraceptive pill approval
Androstin (Andorosuchin; hormone and, 188, 191; negative growth of,
product), 170, 173 as concern, 188, 191; population
AnzaiSadako, 17,35-36,38 growth in 1930S and, 118-120,
Army Hygiene Council, 34-35 123, 124, 209n2; as problem for
army medical inspector general (rikugun women, 104, 122-128
gun~isokan), 21-22, 28 Bismarck, Otto von, 22
Asayama Shin'ichi, 181-183, 205n4, Bloch, Iwan, 84,93-94,15,106,
2I3n29 271112
259
260 Index
Bluestocking (Seito) (feminist periodical), Council for Education and Research,

12 3 2I5nII
brothels. See comfort station system; Criminal Code, 121
prostitutes
Bunpireshon (hormone product), I75 Darwin, Charles, 85
Bureau of Hygiene (Naimush6 Eiseik- De Becker, Joseph E., 46-48, 202n28
yoku), 22, 24-25, 26 defense and security, rhetoric of, 4, 8
demography, 95, 118-120; See also birth
categorization, technologies of, 6, 20 - 2 I rate
censorship: in occupation era, 15, 179- diaphragms (shikyu sakku), 145, 146
181; prewar practices, 14, 152, disclosure vs. suppression, rhetoric of,
153-161; sexology and, 14-15, 59; See also "liberation of sex"
106, 109, 153 -161; strategies for Doi Keiz6, 78 -79, 204nl I
circumventing, 130, 160-161 Drea, Edward, 200n12
Central Counseling Office for Birth Con-
trol (Chiio Sanji Chosetsu S6danjo), educational institutions, 95; See also
13 8 Kyoto University; University of
Central Pharmaceutical Affairs Council, Tokyo
Ministry of Health and Welfare, Ehrlich, Paul, 35-3 6, 79
186, 188, 190 Ellis, Havelock, 82, 84, 85,93,156
Central Review (Chua Koran) (journal), empirical studies: classifications of so-
82 ciety and, 6, 21; "correct" sexual
Central Sanitary Bureau, 21-24; See also knowledge and, 84; of Japan's youth,
Bureau of Hygiene 193-195; problems with, 196-
"character" (seishitsu), 30, 32 197; of prostitutes, 42-49; sex edu-
child prostitution ("compensated dat- cation and, 61; sexological surveys
ing"), 16 and, 9-11, 84-85, 87-94; of sol-
children: compulsory education and, 32; diers, 28-30, 34-35,48; state data
definition of, 60-61; health exami- gathering and, 9-10, 12, 20-22;
nations of, 52-54; hygiene educa- See also health examinations
tion and, 25, 3 I, 53; national body Erb, Wilhelm, 8 I
and, 7-8, 18-19, 22, 49-54; sexual Erisu, Haberokku. See Ellis, Havelock
desire in, 7-8, 56, 58, 62- 63, 69- Eugenic Protection Law, 167, 177
71, 73; See also infantile sexuality; eugenics (yuseigaku): birth control
sex education movement and, 134, 138, 140,
Chireorupin (hormone product), I74 147-148,150-151; impact on
coitus interruptus (Onan method), 144 exological project, 13-14; "posi-
Coleman, Samuel, 215n6 tive" and "negative," 3, 148; post-
colonization, concept of, 1-2 war influence of, 177-184, 2I3n25;
comfort station system, 37, 41, 202n21, prewar racial hygiene and, 13,
202022,202023 161-168; See also racial hygiene;
"compensated dating" (enjokosai), 16 sterilization
condom use: approval of contraceptive Eulenburg, Albert, 105
pill and, 188; for contraception, 41,
116-118,145-146,147,211017, family ideology, 75-76
2I5n6; military introduction of, 27, farm labor, 32, 49-50
40 - 4 I; for prevention of disease, Federation of Kansai Women (Kansai
27,4 0 -4 1 Fujin Rengokai), Osaka, 138
conscription system: debate over, 27- female body: approval of contraceptive
28; physical examinations and, 28- pill and, 188-193; military use of,
33, 29, 3 I, 34-35; resistance to, 37- 38; national body and, 3 - 4,
32-33; See also military, the con- 128; "racial improvement" and, 19;
tracepti ve needle (hinin pin), I 18, reproductive capacity and, I68,
147 172-177; sex education for girls
contraceptive pill, legalization of, 16, and, 68 - 69; sexual satisfaction and,
188- 1 93, 213n24, 2I4n5 15- 16 , 195
Index
feminists: population problem and, 119- Hirschfeld, Magnus, 81, 84, 93, 94, 105,
120, 122-123; views on birth con- I96,207nII
trol, 123 -128 HIV. See AIDS prevention
Fleming, Alexander, 36 Hoffman, Franz, 34
Fore!, August, 58, 105 Home Department, Bureau of Hygiene,
Forster, Friedrich Wilhelrn, 76, 8 I 22, 24-25,26,200n6
Foucault, Michel, 2, 4, 15 homosexuality (doseiai oyohi nanshoku):
Freud, Sigmund, 88, 93, 106 late marriage and, I49; lesbianism
frigidity, causes of, 176 -177 and, 68, 69 -70, 72; masturbation
Fujikawa Yu, 56, 58,65-66,78,79,82, and, 3, 68, 69-70; survey data and,
I22, 20 9 n 4 91, I95- I 9 6
Fukuda Hideko, 96 hormone products, marketing of, 169-
Fukushima Mizuho, 191 17 2 , I7 I , I73, I75
Fukuzawa Atsushi, 140 Hosoi Wakizo, 72-73
Fukuzawa Yukichi, 18-19, 20, 27-28 hospitals for prostitutes, 4 6, 47- 4 8
Household Medical Encyclopedia for
Garon, Sheldon, 12 Nursing and Healing Methods
gender issues: approval of Viagra vs. con- (Kango to ryoho: Katei iten) ,
tracepti ve pill and, 188, I 89; gender 17 6 - 1 77
roles and, 69, 75-76, 117, 119, Humankind: Der Mensch (Jinsei - Der
13 6 - 137, 2 15 n8; health of soldiers Mensch), 56, 57
vs. prostitutes and, 38, 48; surveys hygiene, changes in concept of, 25 - 26
and, 181; Yomiuri Shinbun debate "hygiene matchboxes" (eisei matchi), 40
and, 67-71, 80; See also female
body; male body; maternal ideology; Ieda Sakichi, 20 I n I 5
prostitutes; women Imai Tsuneo, 60-61, 66
genetics, and sterilization regulations, Imamura Naomi, 195
147-148, 163, 164, 166, 167 Imperial Army (Teikoku Rikugun), 27,
Goto Shinpei, 22, 34 35, 20on9; See also conscription sys-
government policy: involvement in birth tem; military, the
control and, 147-151; Meiji era Imperial Navy (Teikoku Kaigun), 27, 35,
resistance to, 32, 49 - 50; population 39,200n9
gro\vth and, 13, 15 6 - I 77; prewar "Imperial Precepts to Soldiers" (Gunjin
censorship and, 153-161; pronatal- chokuyu),3 2 -33
ist population control and, 16 1- impotence. See sexual potency
168; See also censorship; legisla- Inagaki Suematsu, 67- 68
tion; population policy; regulations; Inamura Ryukichi, 129
sterilization infanticide, 120, 122
infantile sexuality, 8; scholarly essays on,
Habuto Eiji, 55, 82, I I 3; advice column 55-58; Yomiuri Shinbun debate and,
by, I I I; journal contributions, 106, 59- 60
107, 114; print media market and, infant mortality rate, 24, 123
113- 11 4,155 Inoue Kowashi, 52
Hacking, Ian, 6 Inoue Tetsujiro, 20
Harmonization Society, 2 I on I 4 international comparisons: infant mor-
Hashimoto Kingon), 15 2 - 153 tality and, 24; sexual attitudes of
Hata Sahachiro, 36, 79 youth and, 194; sterilization and,
Hayashi Hiroshi, 20In24 166; venereal diseases and, 20InI8;
health examinations: children and, 52- See also \1(Testern influence
54; prostitutes and, 26,4 2 -44,47, Ishikawa Chiyomatsu, 104, 209n6
48; soldiers and, 7, 21-22, 26, 28- Ishikawa Hidetsurumaru, 89
33,34-35,4 8 Ishikawa Hiroyoshi, 195
Heimin Hospital, Tokyo, 138 Ishimaru Kumiko, 195
Hiratsuka Raicho, 122, 123-126, 134, Ishimoto Shizue, 109, 130, 132-133,
135,138, 147,I5 0,2I2n8 134,135-136,138,150,163
Hirota Motokichi, 63 IUD (intrauterine device), 109, 146-147
Index
Jannetta, Ann Bowman, 7 Krafft-Ebing, Richard von, 105, 106,

Japan and the Japanese (Nihon oyohi 113, 19 6
Nihonjin) (newspaper), 170 Kiihl, Stefan, 166
Japanese Association for Sex Education, Kurushima Takehiko, 29
16 Kutsumi Fusako, 133, 134, 135
Japanese Association for Sexology Kuwabara Kineo, r46
(Nihon Seigakkai), 179, 183 Kyoto University, 86 - 88, 99
Japanese Association of Racial Hygiene
(Nihon Minzoku Eisei Ky6kai), 19, Labor Farmer Party (R6d6 N6minto),
162-I63, I64-166 100,208nr8
Japanese Birth Control Federation (Ni- labor movement, 210nI4
hon Sanji Ch6setsu Renmei), 150 Laqueur, Thomas W., 204n14
Japanese Birth Control Study Society Lefebvre, Henri, 4, 15, 82
(Nihon Sanji Ch6setsu Kenkyiikai; legislation: abortion and, 13, 150-15 I;
Tokyo), 120, I30, 134-136, 150 against birth control, T 63; on pre-
Japanese Society of Sexology (Nihon vention of venereal diseases, 48;
Seigakkai; I920S group), 104 prewar censorship and, 153-161;
Japanese Union for Birth Control (Nihon sterilization and, 13, 164 - 168;
Sanji Seigen Ky6kai), 138 See also government policy;
Japanese Women's Alliance for Birth regulations
Contro 1, 163 "liberation of sex," 3, 5, 15-16, 128,
Japan Hygiene Statistics Association, 14 1- 1 4 2, 169
18 3 literacy, 102
Johnston, William, 203n4 Lone, Stewart, 2 I
journalism, professionalization of, 95 Lowenthal, Wilhelm, 66
Journal of Pediatrics (Jika Zasshi), 56,58
Journal of Physiology (Seirigaku Majima Yutaka, 134, 140, 143-144,
Kenkyu),89 15 0 , 16 3
male body: as miniature of the national
Kaifu Toshiki (prime minister), 191 body, 3; pronatalist focus on sexual
Kaga\va Toyohiko, 88, 97, 128 potency and, 168, 169-172; school
Kaji Tokijir6, 130, 134, 140, 148- 149 hygiene programs and, 51-52; sex
Kameyama Michiko, 18o education and, 70-71; Viagra ap-
Kanai Shizuka, 78 provaland, 186-193
Kanzaki Suzushi, 180 Malthus, Thomas, 141
Katayama Sen, 97, 103 Marital Life (Fufu Seikatsu; magazine),
Kato Hiroyuki, 97, 207n16 179
Kato Shizue, 13 Marital Sex Life (Fufu no Seiseikatsu;
Kato Tokiya, 140 magazine), I 82
Kawai Eijiro, 96 marriage: "eugenic marriages" and, 167,
Kawakami Hajime, 208n18 168, 178; mixed, and racial im-
Kawasaki Natsu, 127 provement, 20; promotion of early
Kawatani Masao, 107 marriage and, 13, 149 - 150; surveys
Kikuchi Kan, 160 of couples and, 179, 195
Kinoshita Naoe, 97, 103 Married Life (Fufu Seikatsu; magazine),
Kinoshita Tosaku, 140 181
Kinsey, Alfred C., 10, 179, 196 Martin, Clyde E., 179
Kitamura Kunio, I92 Masters, William, 156
Kitano Hiromi, 104-105, 110 masturbation (shuin): homosexuality
Kitazato Shibasaburo, 78, 133 and, 68, 69-70; late marriage and,
Knaus, Hermann, 145 149; neurasthenia and, 63, 65, 106;
Koch, Robert, 34 sex education and, 56,62-63, 65,
Kokkei Shinbun (Humor newspaper), 68; sexological research on, 88-89,
160 92-93,2I3n29
Komai Taku, 164 Masuda Hoson, 49
Kotoku Shiisui, 97, 103 Maternal Body Protection Law (Botai
Koyo Yoshio, 165, 178, 212n7, 213n24 hogoho; 1996), 178
Index
maternal ideology: birth control debates Nagai Hisomu, 19, 162-163, I64-r6S,
and, 122-128; girls' education and, 179, r83,2I2n7,2I3n27
67; sex education and, 7S-76 Nagayo Sensai, 23- 24, 34, 200n6
Matsubara Yoko, 13, 178, 2I3n25 Nakamura Kokyoo, 105-106, 110
Matsumoto Kojiro, 55 Naruse Jinzo, 2I2n8
medical encyclopedias, for home use, national body: children and, 7- 8, 18-
I74,I7 6 - I 77 19, 22, 49-54, 59-60; concepts of,
medical system. See public health system 17-20, 22; imperialist state and,
"mental hygiene," 66 168-177; normative sexuality and,
mental illness, 64 - 65; See also neuras- 3 - 4; racial differences and, r 9 - 20;
thenia rhetoric of defense and security
Midwife Regulations (Sanba kisoku), and, 4 - 5; state collection of data
121 on, 20-22; venereal diseases and,
military, the: hygiene education and, 25- 44, 67; See also female body; male
26, 3 2, 34-3 S; hygiene improve- body
ment and, 34 - 3 5; neurasthenia and, National Eugenic Federation (Kokumin
64-65; physical examination of sol- Yiisei Renmei), r 68
diers and, 7, 21-22, 26, 28-33, 34- National Eugenic Law (Kokumin
3S, 4 8; prostitutes and, 7,37-40; Yiiseiho), 49, r66-r68
See also conscription system nation building in Meiji period: notion
"military-style exercise" (heishiki taiso), of national body and, 17-20;
51-52 scientific data collection and,
Minami Ryo, 66, 68-69, 70-71, 76, 20-22
81 Natsume Soseki, r06
Ministry of Education: Central Sanitary naturalist literature, 77, 204nIo
Bureau and, 22-24; Council for Pu- "neo-Malthusian Sangerism," I62-r63
rity Education, 15, 180; Division of neurasthenia (shinkei suijaku), 205 n 15;
School Hygiene, SO-5 I, 55, 56; sex anxieties about, and sex educa-
education guidelines and, 21 snIO, tion, 63 - 6 S; masturbation and, 63,
2I5nII 65, 106; Western authority and,
Ministry of Health and Welfare, 15, 81-82
200n6; approval of Viagra vs. the Newcomb, Robert, 196, 2I6nI4
pill and, 186, 188, 190-191; racial New Review (Shinkoron) (journal), 82
hygiene thought and, 165-166 NHK (Nihon hoso shuppan kyokai
Mishima Tsuryo, 50-51, 56, 58 19 86 ), 19 6
Mitamura Engyo, 106 Noda Kimiko, 133, 134
Mitamura Shiro, 134, 135, 141 Noda Ritsuta, 133, 134
Miyatake Gaikotsu, 160 normative sexuality: colonization strate-
modern "health regime." See public gies and, 2; influence of surveys on,
health system 197; national body and, 3 - 4; power
Moll, Albert, lOS relations and, 2 - 3; sexological sur-
morality: approval of contraceptive pill veys and, 89, 92-94
and, 188; prewar censorship and,
153-161; social class and, 89-90; Ogawa Naohiro, 192
Yomiuri Shinbun debate and, 62, Ogino Kyiisaku, 145
64- 66 ,7 1-73,73,78 Oguri Fiiyo, 77
More Report (Moa ripoto NOW), 195- Ohama Tetsuya, 33
196, 2Isn9, 2I6nI5 Ohara Research Institute for Social
Mori Arinori, 19 Problems (Ohara Shakai Mondai
Mori Ogai, 78, r06, 204nIo Kenkyusho), 21
Mori Rintaro, 34, 200nI3 Oka Asajiro, 88
mortality rates: infant mortality and, 24; Okada Enji, 183
tuberculosis and, 24-25; from vene- Okada Sachiko, 123
real diseases, 36, 37 Okuma Shigenobu, 64 - 65, 88
Motoyoshi Yujiro, 97 Oku Mumeo, 138
Muko Gunji, 62, 63, 67, 73, 76 oral contraceptives, legalization of,
Murai Tomoshi, 97 188-193
Index
Ordinance Regulating Harmful Contra- measures and, 166 - 168; steriliza-

ceptive Devices (Yiigai hininyo kigu tion law and, 166-167; See also
torishimari kisoku), 121, 147 birth control
Ortega y Gasset, Jose, 82 Porter, Roy, 196
Osaka Asahi Shinbun (newspaper), 88 Porter, Theodore M., 207nI3
Osaka Birth Control Study Society poverty, and birth control, 135, 13 8 - 139
(Osaka Sanji Seigen Kenkyukai), power relations, 2-3; public health sys-
120, 130, 136-144, 140-141, 150 tem and, 54; Viagra vs. the pill and,
Osaka Shinpo (newspaper), 160 18 9
Ota-Ring, 109, 146-147 print media: debate on sex education in,
Ota Tenrei, 106, 146, 159, 160, 166- 58 - 60, 82; phonetic syllable writing
I67,I8I,I84,208n24 systems and, 58, 107-108; prewar
Otsubo, Sumiko, 13, 212n8 censorship and, 153 - 16 I; as venue
Outlook (Taikan) (magazine), 88, 205n3 for sexology, 88, 100-103; Viagra
Ozawa Kenji, 104 debate and, 187, 2I4nI; See also
Oyamalkuo,9 6,208nI8 popular press; sexological journals;
Yomiuri Shinbun debate
Peace Police Law of 1900, I 53 - 154, Professional Women's Coalition for Sexu-
211n1 ality and Health, 192
Peace Preservation Law of 1925, 153- pronatalist ideology: advertising and,
154, 155, 2IInI 169-177; population policy and, 12,
Pediatric Research (Jido kenkyu; jour- 161-168
nal), 55-5 6 prostitutes: as carriers of venereal dis-
pediatrics, 5 I eases, 7, 22, 39-40, 42, 67; as first
"perverse marriages" (hentai kon), 107 sexual partners, 90 - 9 I; girls sold by
Perverse Psyche (Hentai Shinri; journal), families and, 148, 202n25; health
105-106, 110, 112 examinations of, 26, 4 2-44, 47, 48;
"perverse sexual desire" (hentai seiyoku), hospitals for, 46, 47- 48; the mili-
83- 84, 10 5 tary and, 7, 37-40,41, 20In20;
Petition for the Public Recognition of sexologists and, 104, 105; unli-
Birth Control (Sanji seigen koninan), censed, 39, 46
15 0 - 1 5 1 "psychological love" (seishinteki ai), 126
Pettenkofer, Max von, 34 public education: modern contracep-
Pfizer (pharmaceutical company), 186, tion methods and, 130, 13 I, 192-
188 193; role of sexology and, 83-
Pfiugfelder, Gregory, 203n7 85, 94-100; social change and,
pharmaceutical companies, 169 183; See also print media; public
physical exercise: male body and, 51-52; lectures on sexual knowledge; sex
mental hygiene and, 66 education
Pleiades, The (Subaru) (literary maga- public health system, 6; children and, 7-
zine), 77-78 8, 49-54; concepts of national body
Pomeroy, Wardell B., 179 and, 18 - 20; government data collec-
Popular Hygiene (Tsuzoku Eisei) (jour- tion and, 20-22; Meiji period prop-
nal),II2 agation of, 22-26; power relations
Popular Medicine (Tsuzoku Igaku; jour- and, 54; prostitutes and, 7, 42-49;
nal),45, 112,116-118, 159, 170- soldiers and, 7, 21-22, 26-41
17 1 , I73, I75 public lectures on sexual knowledge: po-
popular press: postwar, and eugenic con- lice intervention and, 157; popular-
cepts, 177-178; pronatalist advertis- ization strategy and, 11-12, 97-
ing in, 169-177; sexologists and, 100, 103; Yamamoto and, 98-100,
77-78,103,109-115,155; treat- 108-109
ment of venereal diseases and, 45 "public morals," prewar legislation on,
population policy: birth control move- 154; See also censorship
ment and, 13 I, 132-133; contracep- "public order," prewar legislation on,
tive pill approval and, 191; emigra- 153- 1 54
tion and, 119-120, 128-13; low "purity education" (junketsu kyoiku),
birth rate and, 191; racial hygiene 15, 16, 180
Index
Purity (Kakusei; journal), 37, 104, behavior and, 71-73; parental re-
112 sponsibility and, 73 -76; political
aspects of, 13 -14; postwar changes
Racial Biological Research (Minzoku Ei- in, 18 I; power relations and, 3; pub-
seigaku Kenkyu Rassenbiologische lic debate over, 58 - 60; "purity"
Untersuchungen) (periodical), 165 education and, 15, 16, 193; radio
racial hygiene (minzoku eiseigaku): Meiji broadcasts and, 208n26; reproduc-
period "racial improvement" and, tion vs. contraception as focus of,
18, 19; prewar policies and, 153, 193; scholarly essays on need for,
161-168 55 - 58; scientific-mindedness and,
regulations: affecting prostitutes, 7, 37- 6, 59, 60; techniques of inquiry and,
38, 4 2 , 43 - 44, 48; birth control 60; Yomiuri Shinbun debate on, 8,
and, 120 - 122; children's hygiene 60; See also Yomiuri Shinbun debate
and, 50 - 5 I; conscri pti on system sexological journals (seiyoku zasshi;
and, 32 - 33; See also government "journals of sexual desire"), 10, 15,
policy; legislation 100-109; advertising in, 109-115;
Reich, Wilhelm, I 5 censorship of, IS, 106, 109, 153-
reproductive capacity, focus on, 168, 161; goals of, I 10; See also entries
17 2 - 1 77 for specific journals
Research in Sexology (Seikagaku sexologists: audience for, 10-11, 83-84,
Kenkyu; journal), 109, 159 97-100, 110; birth control move-
Retherford, Robert D., 192 ment and, 128-130; censorship and,
"rhetorical demarcation work," 78 14-15, 109, 153-161; challenges
Rohleder, Hermann, 84 to authority of, 153, 161-168, 169;
Roth, W. A., 34 expert status and, 77-82, 97-100;
Rubin, j., 77 journal publication and, 10, IS,
100-109; modernity and, 82; popu-
Safe Period Method (Anzenkiho)~ 145 larization strategies and, I I-I 2, 97-
Saito Shigeo, 195 100,103,109-115; postwar re-
Sakai Toshihiko, 88 search projects and, 180, 181-184;
Salvarsan, 26-27, 36, 20InI6, 20InI7 prewar challenges to, 15 2 - 153; pub-
same-sex love. See homosexuality lic lectures and, 11-12,97-100,
Sanger, Margaret, 130-133, 138, 140, 103,157; racial hygiene and, 13,
2IonII 153, 161-168; respectibility and,
Sawada Junjiro, 103, 106, III, 113, 14, ISS - 15 6; sexology as field and,
160 8-9,10,11,83- 84,93-94, 18 5;
Sawada Keiko, 103 social reformers and, 14; strategies
school hygiene system: health exam ina - for circumventing censorship and,
tions and, 21-22, 52-54, 68; Meiji 130, 180-181; See also entries for
period and, 21-22, 49-54; See also specific sexologists
sex education Sex Research (Seikenkyu; journal), 104-
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 80 106,110-111
science: "correct" sexual knowledge Sex Study Society (Sei no Kenkyukai),
and, 59,60, 77,84-85; racial hy- 104- 10 5
giene and, 153; role in society, 94- sexual desire: in children, 7- 8, 56, 58,
100; sex education and, 6, 59, 60; 62- 63, 69-7 1, 73; class distinctions
sexologists and, 12, 84 - 8 5; See also and, 71-73; female, 69-70, 101,
sexologists 103, 125; Inale, 70-71, 126; as sep-
Sex and Society (Seito Shakai; journal, arate from reproduction and, 141-
100, 107-109, 112, 114, 140, 148- 142; sex education and, 65-66,
149, 159 68-7 0
sex education: actual behavior of youth Sexual Desire and Humankind (Seiyoku
and, 193 -197; class distinctions to Jinsei) journal, I06, I I I
and, 71-73, 91; gender issues and, "sexual desire books" (seiyokuhon), 158
67-71; Kyoto University course in, Sexuality (Sei) (journal), 100, IOI, 103-
86-88; Ministry of Education guide- 104, III; censorship of, 158-159;
lines and, 2I5nIO, 21 5nI I; moral goals of, 10
266 Index
sexual knowledge: children and, 56, 58; Suzuki Bunji, 96, 130, 140
"correct" sexual behavior and, 103, syphilis. See venereal diseases
162; data on acquisition of, 91-92;
as subversive, 153 - I 6 I Takagi Masayoshi, 97
sexual potency: causes of impotence and, Takahashi Yoshio, 20
214n2; imperialist era focus on, 168, Takano Iwasaburo, 96
169-172, 189; Viagra debate and, Takashima Heisaburo (Takashima
186-189 Beiho),55
Sexual Problems (Seiyoku mandai) Takayasu Itsuko, 209n4
(book), I 13 Takeuchi Shigeyo, 176 -177
"sexual problem," Yomiuri Shinbun de- Tanaka Chiune, 107
bate on. See Yomiuri Shinbun debate Tanaka Koichi, 120
sexual satisfaction, 15 - 16, 195 Tiefer, Leonore, 214n4
Sexual Theory (Seiron; journal), 107, Tissot, Simon Auguste Andre David, 8 I
IoB Tokkapin (hormonal product), 170-I7 I
Shibahara Urako, 144, 163 Tokonami Takejiro, 210n14
Shimada Saburo, 104 Tokyo Asahi Shinbun (newspaper), 88,
Shimoda Jiro, 63, 66, 67, 69, 75-76, 77, 112,127,131,20907
81-82 traditional vs. scientific knowledge, 80,
Shinozaki Nobuo, 179-180, 183 85
Shisando Pharmacy in Tokyo, 171-172 Treas, Judith, 196, 216n14
social change: public education and, 183; "truth about sex," 5,9, 11-12
in Taisho era, 95-96; See also social Tsuchida Kyoson, 96, 135, 141-142
reform Tsukahara Keiji, 55
social class: birth control movement and, tuberculosis: death rate from, 24 - 2 5; as
124, 134-136, 139-140; intellec- form of syphilis, 65, 203n4
tual workers and, 96; morality and,
89-90; sex education and, 71-73, Uchida Roan, 78
9 I; sexual practices and, 7 2 -7 3, University of Tokyo, 94-96
9 0 -9 1 unlicensed prostitutes, 39, 4 6
social reform (shakai kairya): birth con- Unno Kotoku, 140, 141, 148
trol movement and, 123 - 126; Unno Yiiki, 195
notion of national body and, 18; Uno, Kathleen, 7
"rhetoric of reform" and, 215n7;
scientific knowledge and, 94-100; venereal diseases, 201n15; among sol-
sexological project and, 10, I I diers, 26-27, 35-41; costs related
social research institutes, 2 I to, 40, 46; incidence of, among pros-
social sciences, 94-100, 207n14 titutes, 4 2- 49144, 46 - 49; military
social scientific data. See empirical treatment of, 26 - 27, 36; physical
studies effects of, 35-36, 4 2 , 47, 67; sexol-
Society for Sociology (Shakai Gakkai), ogy and, 83 - 84; sources of infection
9 6 -97 and, 7, 22, 26, 39-40, 42, 48; treat-
Society of Sexual Theory (Seironsha), ment of prostitutes for, 44, 46, 47-
107 48; treatments for, III; See also
soldiers. See military, the AIDS prevention
Special Higher Police, 154 - 156 Viagra, 16, 214nl; approval of, vs. con-
Spencer, Herbert, 22, 66 traceptive pill, 188 - I 9 3; debate
statistics. See empirical studies over, 186 - I 89
sterilization: birth control movement and, Virchow, Rudolf, 22
147-148; data on, 178; opposition
to, I 64 - I 65; postwar policies and, Wagatsuma Hiroshi, 195
I77, 178-I78; prewar policies and, Washiyama Yayoi (Yoshioka Yayoi), 62,
12 5, 163, 164-168; in the West, 13 74
Study Group for Sexual Problems (Sei- Watase, W., 86
mondai KenKyiikai), 183 Weininger, Otto, 80
Sun, The (Taiya) (magazine), 77, 112- Western influence, 204n12; Japanese mil-
113,145 itary and, 200n9; public health sys-
Index
tern and, 23; rhetoric of defense and and, 154 - 155, 159; collaborative
security and, 4; scientific authority survey with Yasuda, 88-94, 105,
and, 12, 79-82, 93; sex education I59,18I,I83,206n7,206n8;death
and,s 5, 57~ 77- 82; See also inter- of, ISO, 154-155; field of sexology
national comparisons and, 83 - 8 5; labor movement and,
Widmer, Eric D., 196, 2I6nI4 100,107-109,136,154-155; "lib-
Wiswell, Ella, 146 eration of sex" and, 141; personal
women: data on sexual behavior of, background of, 85 - 86; pioneering
195-196, 2I5n9; education of, survey by, 87-88, 196; public lec-
102; gender roles and, 75 -76; sex- tures by, 98-100, 108-109; scandal
ual desire in, 69-70, IOI~ 103, 125; involving, 99-100; "science for hu-
"sexual problems concerning," 103- mankind" and, 94-95, 98-100;
104; sterilization of, 167; views of See also Sex and Society
birth control pill among, 19 I - 193; Yamamoto Sugi, 180
See also female body; feminists; Yamanouchi Shigeo, 212n8
prostitutes Yasuda Satsuki, 123, 142
Women's Birth Control Federation (Ni- Yasuda Tokutaro, 84 - 85, 109, 140; ster-
hon Sanji Ch6setsu Fujin Renmei), ilization law and, 164 - I 65; work
151 with Yamamoto, 88-94, 105, 159,
Women"s Newspaper (Fujo shinbun)~ 110 181, 18 3
Women~s Review (Fujin K6ron)~ 112, Yokoyama Masao, 104
113, II4, 159, 160-161 Yomiuri Shinbun debate, 8 -9, 58 - 60;
class distinctions and, 71-73; defini-
Yamada Waka, 122, 126-128, 208n25 tion of the child and, 60 - 6 I; expert
Yamagata Aritomo, 27, 32-33, 200n9 knowledge and, 77-82; gender focus
Yamakawa Kikue, 122, 124, 13 0, 135 and, 67-71; harm prevention and,
Yamakawa Saki, 42 61-67; parental vs. professional re-
Yamamoto Senji, 5, 13, 14, 70, 83- 87, sponsibility and, 73 -76
184, 2I1n4; abortion and, 142- Yosano Akiko, 123, 124
I43; birth control movement and, Yoshida Kumaji, 60, 61, 82
109,13-131,133,135-136,137, Yoshino Sakuz6, 88, 96, 127
138-14, 145, 148; Birth Control Yoshioka Yayoi. See Washiyama Yayoi
Review article by, 83 - 8 5; censorship Yubara Motoichi, 62, 66, 71, 81
Compositor: G&S Typesetters, Inc.
Text and display: Sabon
Printer and binder: Thomson-Shore

Sabine Frühstück Colonizing Sex Sexology and Social Control in Modern Japan Colonialisms

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Sabine Frühstück Colonizing Sex Sexology and Social Control in Modern Japan Colonialisms

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Colonizing Sex

I. Doctors within Borders: Profession~ Ethnicity~ and Modernity in Colonial

4. Colonizing Sex: Sexology and Social Control in Modern Japan~ by Sabine

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The paper used in this publication is both acid-free and

List of Illustrations Vll

I. Erecting a Modern Health Regime I7

2. Debating Sex Education 55

3 Sexology for the Masses 83

4 Claiming the Fetus 116

5 Breeding the Japanese "Race" 15 2

I. Idealized sketch of a conscript and his examiner in a health

12. Advertisement for Androstin (Andorosuchin), a

I began research for this project with my dissertation (completed in

Otsubo, Greg Pflugfelder, Don Roden, Saito Hikaru, Miriam Silverberg,

Sexuality is not the most intractable element in power rela-

known terrain, including the discovery by military surgeons of a high rate

some loosely woven-that carne to constitute a complex texture of de-

agogical interest in the female body. Curiously, when politico-economic

culosis, and venereal disease. In children, nervous exhaustion (shinkei

ization of sexual knowledge, the education of "the masses" about "cor-

1920S by sexologists: the former were large, homogenous samples fo-

their aims. Certainly these alliances brought about the mechanisms of

of accurate knowledge about sex-which was directed toward the de-

scenities" (see chapter 3). As a consequence of the scandal he was fired

Anzai Sadako's journal, a memoir of her experiences as a field nurse on

brain seemed to offer further clues to racial difference. Respected phi-

understanding of achieving the national body. The founding of the first

and first director was Nagayo Sensai (1838-1902), another powerful

Under the banner of hygiene, cadets, soldiers, workers, and students

HYGIENE IN THE EMPEROR'S MILITARY

Fukuzawa and other critics of the conscription system accurately

Figure I. Kurushima Takehiko's Everyday Use Encyclopedia 40: Indispensable

Figure 2. Men in the colonies had to travel to "mainland Japan" (Nihon no

Figure 3 The physical examination of conscripts and numerous other military

justifying their unfavorable evaluations of the conscript pool, recruit-

MONITORING SOLDIERS' HEALTH

The health examinations of conscripts and other health matters in the

officers were reminded frequently to check conscripts' physical condi-

In addition to the health examinations of conscripts and the annual ex-

patients eventually suffered loss of control over motor nerves, spinal

In 1924, an average of 6 in I,OOO deaths in the population were as-

tion of Nanjing. At least as important a factor for the establishment of

As Anzai's memoir and other records show, appeals to soldiers about

amination of 5.28 million twenty-year-old men found that the number

of the 193 os, condoms were distributed in large quantities to soldiers.

We never forgot to disinfect ourselves when the man

As former karayuki-san Yamakawa Saki reports, by the time of Japan's

sary or expedient by a physician. Infected women had to seek proper

gonorrhea infection rates among the examined prostitutes was as high

19 0 5 : 3 57) Moreover, physicians sometimes discovered cases that

implementation of the National Eugenic Law, which I shall discuss in

EXAMINING CHILDREN'S BODIES

Children, Masuda Hason noted in his Social History of Children (Jido

of the fittest. At wartime in particular, the ideal of not only a strong

Figure 5. Children's textbooks, storybooks, and magazines em-

fered from headaches, exhaustion, melancholia, a pale complexion, or

Debating Sex Education

Habuto Eiji was a gynecologist and a tremendously prolific writer of

SOME ESSAYS ON INFANTILE SEXUALITY

journals to provide a forum, mainly for medical doctors and pedagogues,

had given at the first International World Conference on School Hygiene

THE "SEXUAL PROBLEM"